- From: Ambrose Li <ambrose.li@gmail.com>
- Date: Mon, 31 Dec 2007 13:29:42 -0500
- To: "Peter Moulder" <Peter.Moulder@infotech.monash.edu.au>
- Cc: www-style@w3.org
On 31/12/2007, Peter Moulder <Peter.Moulder@infotech.monash.edu.au> wrote:
> OTOH:
>
> - I did find one publication (in chinese) that had instances of a
> text block flowing both sides of non-block floats. (I might perhaps
> mention that this is a local paper serving chinese readers in an
> English-speaking country, and one might well question whether the
> publication is likely to employ a skilled/knowledgable typographer.)
As I see it, the state of Chinese typography has already been very much
decreased to the point of "some knowledge is already lost" because
computerized page layout programs simply could not handle the more
complex layouts until recently. It is already too late.
As for the issue of readability, you need to note that Chinese words
are generally shorter than English words. Lines that have optimal
width in English can be excessively wide in Chinese.
> I did say I'd write more about reading difficulty. I mainly just
> wanted to cite a typography book that recommends against it. I don't
> have the book handy to check, but I believe that the book in question is
> author={James Felici},
> title={The Complete Manual of Typography},
> year=2003,
> publisher={Peach Pit Press},
> address={Berkeley, CA}
As in my involvement with Wikipedia, I am very much against this.
Especially in the case of Chinese (but including English), there is
much typographic knowledge that, apparently, has NEVER been
published in any book. Having to cite a reference for such things
is the wrong approach IMHO, it just gives a false sense of authority.
--
cheers,
-ambrose
Yahoo and Gmail must die. Yes, I use them, but they still must die.
PS: Don't trust everything you read in Wikipedia. (Very Important)
Received on Monday, 31 December 2007 18:29:55 UTC