Path: inforamp.net!ts4-05.inforamp.net!user From: poynton@ poynton.com (Charles Poynton) Newsgroups: comp.text.frame Subject: Re: FrameMensa Quiz #1 -- Paragraph Spacing Date: Mon, 21 Aug 1995 14:33:35 +0000 Lines: 82 Message-ID: References: NNTP-Posting-Host: ts4-05.inforamp.net In article , I presented a quiz. A correspondent writes, > This Quiz. What is the practical use of such paragraph tags? The quiz is not arbitrary. To explain why I want such a format, I have to start a long way back. A book is easiest to read when the paper is very white and the ink is very black. Technically, in addition to fairly "bright" paper with a reflectance of 0.75 or more, we also want a high "contrast ratio" between white and black, that is, a high ratio between reflectance of the paper (say 0.75) and the reflectance of the ink (say 0.02). But paper is somewhat transparent. The paper used for a book is thinner than the paper used in a laserprinter, so even more transparent. Open your photocopier's cover and take a copy of the empty glass -- if you like, take a copy of the ceiling of your photocopy room, out of focus. This will produce a piece of paper entirely covered with black toner. Place this sheet immediately behind the page of the book that you are reading. The page will become quite dark. The ink on the reverse of the page you are reading has the same effect -- it absorbs light and darkens the face of the page. You may have once made a photocopy from a newspaper, to find that in the copy the area between the lines was darkened somewhat by the content on the reverse of the page. You can alleviate this effect when making a photocopy by backing such a page with the black sheet that I explained how to make a moment ago. This is not a feasible solution for reading, but the photocopier machinery is insensitive to the absolute reflectance of white, and responds only to the contrast ratio. Take a book of the highest quality, a book on sculpture or painting say. (Do not try this with a "computer" book). Hold an opened, single page up to the light. You will see that the lines of type facing you are set exactly on top of the lines of type facing the other way -- the lines are on a fixed grid. Even if a section heading or some other element intervenes, in a really well composed book, the grid is maintained throughout the height of every page. This arrangement makes sure that the dark type on the reverse side of a page has the minimum impact on the contrast ratio. Another reason for the grid is more esoteric. If you read the works of the classic typographers, you find that they all agree that a regular vertical division of space lends a pleasing rhythm to a piece. Here's Bringhurst: Time is divisible into any number of increments. So is space. But for working purposes, time in music is divided into a few proportional intervals: halves, quarters, eighths, sixteenths and so on. And time in music is measured. Add a quarter note to a bar whose time is already accounted for and, somewhere nearby, the equivalent of the quarter note must come out. Phrasing and rhythm can move in and out of phase -- as they do in the singing of Billie Holiday and the trumpet solos of Miles Davis -- but the force of blues phrasing and syncopation vanishes if the beat is lost. Space in typography is like time in music. ... Vertical space is metered ... You must choose not only the basic measure -- the depth of the column or page -- but also a basic rhythmical unit. This unit is the leading, which is the distance from one baseline to the next. This is from Robert Bringhurst, The Elements of Typograhic Style, Hartley & Marks, Vancouver BC, 1992. My "quiz" might seem frivolous at first glance. But I am quite serious: I want to use FrameMaker to achieve excellent typography. I have found a very clumsy way to do what I want, but I hope that a Framer has an easier way. By the way I received a private reply that gives an amazing account of detail concerning exactly where FrameMaker sets characters, determined by a feat of reverse engineering. I do not have permission to post this, however. C. Charles Poynton [Mac Eudora/MIME/BinHex]