Characters per inch with ConTexT

Characters per inch with ConTexT

[Aditya Mahajan]

Hi,

I am writing a document where the guidelines say that I should use 
Times Roman font at 10pt with 15 characters per inch and 6 lines per 
inch. I am using thermes from tex gyre rscaled=1.015 as the bodyfont. 
At this setting I get a bit more less than 6 lines per inch (which is 
fine) but roughtly 17 characters per inch. Any way I could setup fonts 
so that both these criteria is automatically met?

Why do people come up with such criteria :((

Aditya

Re: Characters per inch with ConTexT

[Taco Hoekwater]

Aditya Mahajan wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I am writing a document where the guidelines say that I should use 
> Times Roman font at 10pt with 15 characters per inch and 6 lines per 
> inch. I am using thermes from tex gyre rscaled=1.015 as the bodyfont. 
> At this setting I get a bit more less than 6 lines per inch (which is 
> fine) but roughtly 17 characters per inch. Any way I could setup fonts 
> so that both these criteria is automatically met?

This should give you exactly 6 lpi @ 10pt

   \setupbodyfontenvironment[10pt][interlinespace=12bp]

> Why do people come up with such criteria :((

The average character width in times roman is only a  little over 4pt
when loaded at 10pt, resulting in more than 18cpi, so you could try
to explain to them that the 10pt and 15cpm contradict eachother.

But I guess they do not really expect you to do anything with the cpi 
statement, unless you are using a typewriter.

Best, Taco

Re: Characters per inch with ConTexT

[Aditya Mahajan]

On Wed, 14 Feb 2007, Taco Hoekwater wrote:

> Aditya Mahajan wrote:
>> Hi,
>>
>> I am writing a document where the guidelines say that I should use
>> Times Roman font at 10pt with 15 characters per inch and 6 lines per
>> inch. I am using thermes from tex gyre rscaled=1.015 as the bodyfont.
>> At this setting I get a bit more less than 6 lines per inch (which is
>> fine) but roughtly 17 characters per inch. Any way I could setup fonts
>> so that both these criteria is automatically met?
>
> This should give you exactly 6 lpi @ 10pt
>
>   \setupbodyfontenvironment[10pt][interlinespace=12bp]

Thank you. Now I see an advantage of bp over pt.

>> Why do people come up with such criteria :((
>
> The average character width in times roman is only a  little over 4pt
> when loaded at 10pt, resulting in more than 18cpi, so you could try
> to explain to them that the 10pt and 15cpm contradict eachother.

That is what I found. Can I tweak spacefactor and spaceskip to give an 
impression that there are 15 cpi.

> But I guess they do not really expect you to do anything with the cpi
> statement, unless you are using a typewriter.

I guess someone made the requirements in 1950 or 1960, and others are 
blindly copying them. Maybe, I should typeset everything in monotype 
font :)

Aditya

Re: Characters per inch with ConTexT

[Hans Hagen]

Aditya Mahajan wrote:
>
> That is what I found. Can I tweak spacefactor and spaceskip to give an 
> impression that there are 15 cpi.
>   
you can create a shinked font i.e. make an instance with .85% wide chars 
(contrary to an extended one)
> I guess someone made the requirements in 1950 or 1960, and others are 
> blindly copying them. Maybe, I should typeset everything in monotype 
> font :)
>   
cm is kind of monotype times ... you mean monospaced -) there is a narrow latin modern tt variant you can use ... 132 chars on 80 

Hans 


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Re: Characters per inch with ConTexT

[Taco Hoekwater]

Aditya Mahajan wrote:
> 
> I guess someone made the requirements in 1950 or 1960, and others are 
> blindly copying them. Maybe, I should typeset everything in monotype 
> font :)

I remember we had a ball-based typewriter at Kluwer Academic that had
variable width characters as well as different fonts: one per ball.
We had a whole bunch of these balls in a cardboard box. So maybe,
they even had variant widths like Times10 @ 10cpi, Times10 @ 12cpi ?

Best, Taco