On Jan 9, 2008, at 10:58 PM, Jim Drew wrote: > I'd buy into this if I saw any indication that applications tended to > put anything but the same size space at the end of a sentence as > between words. But they don't seem to.
If the font is defined as proportional and not monospaced -- which is basically everything except Courier or Monaco for all practical purposes -- it by definition has variable width defined and built directly into it. This includes the width definition of things like spaces, which is different from font to font. The font metrics then handle things like spacing and if the application doesn't have its own text rendering engine, then the operating system handles rendering the basic core pieces as defined in the font metrics. IOW, it's not really an application thing. > But maybe InDesign does. I > know many DTP apps have the ability to dynamically shift the width of > spaces in justified text -- and the spacing between letters, too -- to > improve letter packing or other mechanisms, so assuming that the end > of a sentence can actually be detected with reasonable fidelity, it > wouldn't be hard to provide extra width between sentences. No matter how crappy the application you use on the computer (and Microsoft Word is about as crappy as it gets with regard to typography), the operating system is often handling the core type rendering, even in the worst case scenario. And the operating system is either using TrueType or OpenType which respects many core metrics of the font to handle basic spacing issues. I will say however that if you use a Macintosh, the font rendering is a thousand times better than on Windows, even if the MacOS still lacks a truly sophisticated type engine like one finds in products like InDesign. (Mostly due to technological constraints like RAM use and processing speed and such.) Outside of this, adding extra spaces is basically breaking the metrics of the font as implemented carefully by the font designer, and when using a product that actually does handle the font even more properly than the core OS does, completely ruins the overall river control, flow and color of the type. > But until I see a whole lot more apps doing it automatically, > including browsers, the only way to ensure that sentences make > themselves visually separated for improved chunking and readability > seems to be to do it manually. Sorry... I couldn't disagree more. Most applications and the operating system still ignore proper kerning rules for certain glyph pairs, like the classic "AV" example. But as a general rule, the core metrics that are used in rendering fonts are plenty fine for legibility -- as long as all of the core typographical rules, like those found in Bringhurst's "The Elements of Typographic Style," are respected and used by the designer. The problem I think you are experiencing and that most people experience without realizing it is just how badly our typographic world has become in the past ten to twenty years due to explosions in technology without a better core foundation for elegant type rendering, combined often with a lack of typographic training of designers working on digital products. (Which is why I make the claim interaction designers need a core understanding of the fundamentals of typography. That alone would remedy so many issues in the design of digital products it's not even funny.) SIDENOTE: I love the new type revolution happening on so many high profile web sites like The New York Times and CNN. It's really awesome to see the designers of those sites start to spend so much more time trying to make everything more elegant with regard to how they spec their type. It still has a some ways to go (mostly with issues of contrast for those folks who prefer higher contrast reading), but it's a very good sign that things are finally about to turn the corner, I think. Adding extra spaces after periods is really a very bad habit formed when the large majority of corporate communication was ruled by technology that could only use monospaced fonts -- that is of course the typewriter, and the typewriter lasted a few generations, so it had plenty of time to entrench itself. Further, it's a habit that will wind up hurting you once the technology gets even better and renders type with even more sophistication, which is not that far off on the horizon quite frankly. In other words, when the eBook of the near future catches up to the printing press in terms of display resolution and type rendering sophistication and you start doing all the self publishing of your writing, little hacks like adding extra spaces would effectively ruin all that amazing technological progress. That kind of predicament would kind of be similar to the same problem of trying to get the United States to switch to the metric system that we currently experience. Once it's ingrained and entrenched, changing it is near impossible due to pure inertia, no matter how inferior and silly our outdated measurement system is compared to the metric system and what all the other smart people of the world have adopted. It's a good thing though that the OS and most of the web has adopted the single space rule and effectively ignores double spaces, so we really won't have to worry about it too much. Our current flavor of technology has actually been a massive step backwards with regard to legibility, but that does not and never will negate the fact that typography rules themselves are actually quite solid. Once the technology catches back up, everything will get right back on track. Please see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Full_stop#Spacing_after_full_stop (This isn't the best explanation, and a good example of why Wikipedia is an imperfect medium, but it's good enough for this discussion) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Typeface#Digital_type http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Typeface#Proportion I could discuss this topic for years. I spent so much time on it in my career... So if I'm boring anyone, my apologies. (Next you should ask me about rivers and type color and how early DTP programs like Aldus PageMaker and Quark XPress basically ruined good typography in the magazine and publishing industry for years until InDesign and more sophisticated type engines came along and brought proper control of it back to the publishing world. Then you'll truly see the depths of my type geekery.) -- Andrei Herasimchuk Principal, Involution Studios innovating the digital world e. [EMAIL PROTECTED] c. +1 408 306 6422 ________________________________________________________________ *Come to IxDA Interaction08 | Savannah* February 8-10, 2008 in Savannah, GA, USA Register today: http://interaction08.ixda.org/ ________________________________________________________________ Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ....... 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