Re: Character and word spacing

[Rik Kabel <context@rik.users.panix.com>]

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On 2014-05-29 19:29, Hans Hagen wrote:
> On 5/29/2014 8:15 PM, Rik Kabel wrote:
>> I am setting some text from Geoffrey Dowding's /Finer Points in the
>> Spacing and Arrangement of Type/. I am trying to set it using his
>> recommendations. For those not familiar with his book, the key point is
>> that he promotes extremely tight spacing to achieve a uniform density
>> across the page in the belief that this leads to a pleasing presentation
>> and improved readability.
>>
>> Among his recommendations is that an opening single quote together with
>> the space preceding it should take up no more space than a normal word
>> space, and similarly following a closing single quote; that the space
>> after some punctuation be minimized (some of his commas appear to have
>> perhaps just a hairspace, following them); that the space between
>> punctuation and letters be adjusted according to the shape of the
>> letter; and that 'and' be replaced by '&' as necessary to improve word
>> spacing. While this last is probably beyond the scope of ConTeXt, I am
>> hoping that the first few might be managed through
>> \definecharacterspacing, \setupcharacterspacing, and 
>> \setcharacterspacing.
>>
>> Alas, I have found no documentation on this set of commands, and what I
>> see in the source is opaque.
>>
>> If you have pointers to the details of these commands, or other
>> suggestions for such typographic exercises, please let me know.
>
> you can mess with sfcodes:
>
> \starttext
>
> \input tufte
>
> \sfcode`\.100 \sfcode`\,100
> \sfcode`\?100 \sfcode`\!100
> \sfcode`\:100 \sfcode`\;100
>
> \input tufte
>
> \dostepwiserecurse{`a}{`z}{1}{\sfcode#1=100\relax}
>
> \input tufte
>
> \dostepwiserecurse{"0}{"FFFF}{1}{\sfcode#1=100\relax}
>
> \input tufte
>
> \stoptext
>
> I'm pretty sure I would not read books typeset that way.
>
> replacing and by & can be done too but that would look even worse (for 
> consistency one should then replace 'or' by | and even more can be 
> saved by going sms: "wandering" becomes "w&ndering", and "according" 
> becomes "acc|rding" plus the usual messing with digits
>
> probably, omitting all vowels would work out too for reader who like 
> that compact typesetting
>
> Hans
>

Hans,

I think you are a bit too quick to judge from my description (and that 
is the fault of my description).

Below is a bit I scanned from page 51 of the 1966 3rd edition where you 
can see the '&' substitution and general tightness:


I have put the full scan of pages 50 and 51 at 
http://www.panix.com/~rik/Dowding_50-51.pdf 
<http://www.panix.com/%7Erik/Dowding_50-51.pdf> so that you can see the 
overall effect more clearly. I also put up pages 28 and 29 
(http://www.panix.com/~rik/Dowding_28-29.pdf 
<http://www.panix.com/%7Erik/Dowding_28-29.pdf>), where he discusses 
fitting quotation marks and other punctuation around particular shapes.

Dowding represents the fine, high-quality handset press aesthetic of the 
early- and mid-20th century, but he was also concerned with job-work and 
high-volume publishing. He comes from the same tradition as Frederic 
Goudy, Eric Gill, Stanley Morison, D.B. Updike, and Bruce Rogers. They 
celebrated the art of book typography as much as the mechanics. Dowding 
was not quite the romantic that the others (Gill in particular) were, 
and saw the transition to automated typesetting as a challenge to the 
art largely because of the change in economics (it is disruptive and 
relatively expensive to rework a line of type once cast). I have no 
doubt that he would have welcomed the renewed flexibility that DEK 
provided, and you continue to provide, through newer tools than the 
crude early automation that he faced. (And yes, I do understand some of 
the economics of the printshop. I worked for a short time while in 
college in a hot-type shop, a weekly newspaper, hand-setting display 
type for a Ludlow caster and making up pages on the stone.)

My issue with Dowding (and with Gill) is that they suggest that the 
compositor has an obligation to change the author's text, without 
consultation and agreement, in order to meet his concept of better page 
makeup. Dowding's sensitivity to the appearance of the page, on the 
other hand, is sadly missing from much of book publishing today.

Gross manipulation of the space factors is probably too crude to 
accomplish much in implementing the style Dowding promotes, although the 
tightness in the second tufte from your example (modifying the 
punctuation) may be a starting point.

With XeTeX, one can use \interchartoks to handle general 
(non-font-specific) kerning between punctuation and certain letter 
shapes (sloped left or right, ascender, descender, ...) beyond what any 
particular font's kerning tables provide. I see nothing in MKIV that 
provides this, and thought that perhaps \definecharacterspacing might 
fill the role. Hence the original question in this thread.

-- 
Rik Kabel


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