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List:       lyx-users
Subject:    Re: Help for paper about LaTeX/LyX and the meaning of life
From:       Steve Litt <slitt () troubleshooters ! com>
Date:       2009-03-25 15:39:25
Message-ID: 200903251139.25822.slitt () troubleshooters ! com
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On Wednesday 25 March 2009 04:32:56 am Manveru wrote:
> I would like to drop a cent to the whole discussion.
>
> I am terrified reading about way how some publishers treats publication.
> Leaving layout to the author is the worst scenario from readers point of
> view. Author is responsible for content - the knowledge or scenario - and
> only small group of them may have enough knowledge about publishing
> standards and the printing culture. Historically the art work connected
> with printing has been developed through last six hundred years. Honestly
> saying, we cannot reduce that six hundred years to one or second piece of
> software. And author concentrated on his/her text cannot design coherent
> typeset template. With all the respect to authors and programmers.
>
> Word is a piece of crap in terms of typesetting, there was even time when
> moving .doc between computers may influence formatting. In professional
> typesetting every glyph on the page has is position, size, angle and so on.
> This cannot be solved in program based on simple flow of text on page.
>
> TeX was Knuth's solution to preparation of good quality scientific
> documents in scientific world when most popular way of publishing articles
> was exchanging poor photocopies of text entered on typewriter machine. You
> can still find articles authored by professors like Dijkstra and Wirth
> scanned and put in the internet databases. Knuth's TeX solved that very
> well. So well, that many scientists do not know/accept other way of writing
> their texts than in TeX/LaTeX. Regards, prof. Knuth! Regars, Lamport.
>
> But from artistic perspective, from point of view of all that people that
> study art for couple of years before they start designing professionally,
> LaTeX products are really far from ideal - it is beacause when you writing
> software it is mathematically impossible to cover all boundary conditions
> that may happen during typesetting.
>
> All that and previous discussion leads me to the conclusion, that every
> publisher preparing books for the market (in does not matter wheter it is a
> book for bookstore or some publication for professors), who does not invest
> in professional human-driven typesetting do the assassination of the six
> hunderd years history of typesetting. Please keep than on mind.
>
> All above is my private opionin and was not my intention to offence anyone.

Hi Manveru,

In an ideal world, I'd slam out content, and a publisher would take care of 
everything else, including marketing. I'd get between five and fifteen cents 
on the dollar, but they'd do such a good job marketing that I'd still come 
out better.

Unfortunately, that NEVER was the case.

Now there's a new factor -- PDF eBooks can be "printed" for no cost. The 
purchase of print books is a habit that will be changing during the next few 
years, as people change their paper book reading habit in favor of PDFs 
costing half as much for the same amount of information. 

Without the whole printing thing, and given the fact that publishers never did 
help much with marketing, there's very little the publisher or any other 
middleman can offer in the way of value added. 

They can help with proofreading/copy editing so the verbiage sounds better. 
But then again, I can hire a proofreader/copy editor. They can help with 
typography. 

But how much value does typography really add? My first 
book, "Troubleshooting: Tools, Tips and Techniques", was written in 
WordPerfect 5.0. I got a few complaints about that book, but they were 
content related. Nobody complained about the print.

My second book, "Rapid Learning: Secret Weapon of the Successful 
Technologist", was written in MS Word. Everyone loves it, to this day I get 
email saying "I followed your instructions and got a job!", but I've had not 
a single comment about the book's typography. Not one.

My following two print books, "Troubleshooting Techniques of the Successful 
Technologist" and "Manager's Guide to Troubleshooting", as well as all my 
eBooks, "28 Tales of Troubleshooting", "Troubleshooting: Just the 
Facts", "Learn Vim Tonight", and "Rapid Learning for the 21st Century", were 
written in LyX. Nobody said anything positive or negative about these books' 
typography or printing. I got a whole lot of feedback on content, but nothing 
on the way the books looked (excluding the covers -- I'm a lousy artist).

My point is this. Yeah, it would be nice if I didn't have to deal with 
typography, but from the reader POV it's eclipsed by content. If I were 
considering putting time or money into typography, from a sales perspective 
I'd do much better to divert the time and money away from typography and into 
either content, advertising, marketing, research, or certainly a better cover 
and binding so that it would fit into a bookstore.

If an author is smart enought to stick to one typeface, and stay away from 
making an artistic statement with his typography, and make his lines short 
enough so the reader doesn't lose the line on retrace, and include a binding 
gutter so the reader doesn't have to smash the binding flat to read the left 
part of odd number pages, and even part of right number pages, then by far 
the ruling factor on reader acceptance will be the content, and there will be 
little value added in further refinement of the typography.

Luckily, LyX's Book document class fulfills the minimum requirements listed in 
the preceding paragraph.

So, because of the new economics of the book universe, many/most authors will 
need to take charge of their typography. No problem. If they use reasonable 
margins and a legible serif typeface, and promote consistency with the use of 
styles, that will be more than good enough.

SteveT

Steve Litt
Recession Relief Package
http://www.recession-relief.US

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