xml-dev - Re: The problem with typography (with or without flow objects)

["Sebastian Rahtz" <sebastian.rahtz@computing-services.oxford.ac.uk>]

Eve L. Maler writes:
 > >works. We put in PIs to force page breaks in the formatter, for
 > >instance.
 > 
 > You insert page breaks automatically when you create the FOs?  Or a human 
 > sits there and inserts them? 

no, the human inserts them in the source. we ran the book, viewed the
pages, and corrected the bad breaks with PIs in the XML file, and
reran the formatting.

 > It's the latter process that has gone by the 
 > wayside in most high-volume production systems I know of, and it's 
 > especially true the more output destinations you have.

I am not 100% sure what "high-volume" means to you. The way I look at
it, a 300 page book merits a couple of hours spent inserting PIs. If I 
was doing a 2000 page software manual, I'd make sure the design was such that 
bad page breaks were unlikely. So I would not, for instance, use
narrow double columns in a job that was destined for large-scale batch 
processing (I worked on telephone bills earlier this year, for
instance, 70000 page documents; obviously no question of manual
intervention!)

My point is that FO needs to cope with 70000 phone bills, 300 page
books, and 4 page tightly-constrained wedding invitations.


 > but that's the way of the world...  And as I get closer to 40, I find that 
 > I much prefer a Web page or e-book whose point size I can bump up than a 
 > beautiful printed page that is not similarly "scalable."

Speaking as someone quite a way over 40, I find the well-designed page 
a greater aid to reading than just point size. but then computer
screens make me impotent, so I have an added incentive to use books...

Why do I have this worrying feeling that we are on the same side in
this discussion, anyway?

Sebastian Rahtz


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