On Fri, Jul 31, 2020, Steve Izma wrote: > For almost everything I typeset, especially books and > newsletter-type publications, I always at least a few places > where I need to use track kerning on a paragraph in order to get > good word spacing and to shorten or lengthen paragraphs in order > to avoid widows (the last line of a paragraph starting a column > of text). When I adjust the kerning (or mortising, if necessary) > in values of one-hundredth or one-thousandth of a point, it can > make a difference in whether a word fits on a line or is broken > or pushed to the next line, thereby making the paragraph too > long. I avoid trying to adjust only part of a paragraph because > that can drastically affect the "colour" (i.e., density) of the > text.
Ditto. This was "how the pros did it" 40 years ago when I was apprenticing in a type shop, and it's still the way they do it. No programme, application, or algorithm can produce typographic results as good as those that have been fine-tuned by a human. The finer the tuning--i.e. line-by-line--the better the result. > That said, I've never been convinced that paragraph-at-a-time > justification makes a difference to the work I need to do for > getting good word fits and even colour to the page. Based on my own experience, I agree. Sure, with the KP algo you almost never get widows, but that doesn't mean the typographic strategies used to achieve this golden state are always satisfactory. > ...I would like to caution people who think that the > implementation of that algorithm [Knuth-Plass] in groff is going > to lessen the effort that goes into high-quality typography. Again, I agree. Several years ago, I fielded the idea that, instead of chasing after the Grail of paragraph-at-once, groff's line-formatting algorithm be improved instead. I worked on systems that used the formatting strategy I proposed https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/groff/2014-03/msg00322.html and can confirm that it significantly reduced the amount of intervention required to achieve good grey on a line-by-line basis. There wasn't much interest in the proposal back then--I felt a bit like a voice crying in the wilderness--but maybe it's time to try crying again? -- Peter Schaffter http://www.schaffter.ca
