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This is produced by Robert %%% Solovay's checksum utility.", %%% } %%% ==================================================================== \chapter{Some e-mail comments on standard styles} \begin{footnotesize}\begin{verbatim} From: David Rhead ... Date: 3 Mar 91 17:58:49 At Cork, I think that Frank mentioned the idea of both: 1. supplying style files that emulate the effect of the present LaTeX 2.09 "standard styles" (for backwards compatibility) 2. supplying new "standard style" files. I think he mentioned having analogues of the current article, report and book, plus having a "conference proceedings" style. This note is about (2). In general, I'd suggest that (2) be done in line with traditional mainstream publishing practice. [This seemed to be what Phil Taylor was after when, at Cork, he described the adjustments he'd had to make to get a LaTeX-ed book that didn't scream "I've been produced by (La)TeX!", and could be published. It would be nice if people in his position didn't have to make so many adjustments.] This leaves the problem of determining what mainstream practice is. Here are some comments about page-sizes and typefaces. JOURNAL ARTICLES As regards journal articles, the book by Page, Campbell & Meadows may be helpful [1, pp. 35-6]. The gist of it seems to be that, for reasons connected with the sizes of printing presses, journals tend to ignore B5 and A4 (or did when [1] was written) and go for page sizes of: * 244 mm x 172 mm, with a 2-column layout. This is slightly smaller than B5 (because B5 doesn't make optimum use of the presses). Page et al. seem to be talking in terms of typesize of "9 on 10.5" for such a design (although strictly speaking this was for a B5 example.) Perhaps this is what the analogue of \documentstyle[9pt,twocolumn]{article} should be designed for. * 276 mm x 219 mm (demi quarto), with a 2-column layout. This is slighly smaller than A4. Page et al. seem to be talking in terms of typesize of "10 on 11.5" for such a design. Perhaps this is what the analogue of \documentstyle[10pt,twocolumn]{article} should be designed for. Page et al. also give two B5 (250 mm x 176 mm) examples: * single-column, type-area 197 mm x 130 mm, 10 on 11.5 Perhaps the analogue of \documentstyle[10pt]{article} should implement something like this. * double-column, type-area 206 mm x 133 mm, 9 on 10.5 These may be more to illustrate economics of different designs than to say that people actually use B5 much, though. They say that single column with 10pt is usually preferred for maths & physics. If some of the "new standard style" files implemented designs aimed at the above sizes of paper (with crop marks to show the corners of the target area), they might serve as a good starting point for anyone who has to produce a style file for a real journal, particularly if the rest of the design was based on "the average design" of some real journals Such styles might also keep authors happy who want to see what their paper might look like in a real journal. BOOKS As regards books, Hugh Williamson suggests that the A series haven't caught on for book work (not in 1983 Britain, anyway) [2, ch. 3]. He lists the British Standard cut-page sizes, including (in millimetres): quarto octavo crown 246 x 189 186 x 123 large crown 258 x 201 198 x 129 demy 276 x 219 216 x 138 royal 312 x 237 234 x 156 Apparently 181 x 111 and 178 x 111 are used for paperbacks. He also lists the corresponding American stock sheet sizes, which give cut-page sizes of: 140 x 216 156 x 235 127 x 187 137 x 203 140 x 210 143 x 213 which agrees with the Chicago Manual of Style [3, p. 623]. Obviously there is a great variety of sizes. Presumably any new "standard book styles" would have to be designed for a particular size of paper. I'd suggest that they be designed for a cut-sheet size that IS actually used for books (e.g. one or more of the above) and that crop-marks be produced to show the "target area". Ruari McLean [4, p. 130] says that demi octavo is one of the most "normal" sizes for books, so perhaps 216 x 138 (or the nearest US size, 216 x 140) should be one of the "target areas". As regards section headings - Williamson [2, p. 163] mentions the scheme: level A (i.e., \section) in roman capitals; level B in small capitals; level C in upper/lower case italic, level D in upper/lower case italic, followed by a point, run-in with text. "The Chicago Manual of Style" [3, p. 570] mentions: level A caps & small caps (or full caps) level B in small capitals level C in italics, upper/lower case, followed by a point, run in with text. There seems a fair amount of consensus between these gurus. Perhaps elements of these schemes could be combined to give a mainstream design that isn't going to upset anyone. A4 (and US equivalent) We have the contradition that: * LaTeX is a typeSETTING system. For most books and journals, the typesetting tradition uses paper that is smaller than A4, and uses fonts of around 10pt. * most LaTeX output comes, at least in the first instance, on A4 (or US equivalent) paper from a laserprinter, where A4 etc. is an "office" paper size that fits in with the typeWRITING tradition (which usually involves fonts of arout 12pt). So the naive user, seeing something from a "book" \documentstyle on A4 in 10pt, starts to ask "Why doesn't it use all the paper?". Crop marks, to indicate the page-size for which the design is intended, might help: * such people to understand why the design doesn't fill A4 * avoid such people getting an a4.sty out of an archive and going \documentstyle[a4]{...} (to get text height/width that purports to be "for A4 paper") and then wondering why they've got something that is difficult to read * help anyone who wants to produce a book to visualise the effect that was intended by the designer. Although it may not be clear which, of the large variety of cut-page sizes in common use, should provide the target "cut-page sizes" for the "new standard style's" article and book designs (and their variants), it does seem fairly clear that: * the target "cut-page sizes" should generally be smaller than the A4 sheet on which output will initially appear * the users should be made aware that the target area is different from A4, so they don't ruin the design in their attempts to "make it fit A4". Obviously, if a design is intended for A4 (as it might be for a draft article, a report or a thesis), the crop marks would be omitted. Users would then know that they can use the output just as it comes out of their laserprinter. GENERAL I'd be inclined to make Times Roman the normal font for running text in any "new standard styles" (with a switch somewhere to substitute Computer Modern for anyone who doesn't have Times Roman, or wants to get "nearly ready for publication" before they switch from preview-able Computer Modern to less-easily-previewed Times Roman). I have the impression that Times Roman is "the default font" for running text in mainstream publishing. This would cut out one change that publishers often seem (rightly or wrongly) to ask people to make who are trying to typeset a book themselves. [I have nothing against Computer Modern. I'm just inclined to "bow to the inevitable".] I'd be inclined to refrain from providing style-files in situations where they are unrealistic. For example, if it is very rare for real journals and books to use a 12 point typeface for running text, it may not be worth the effort of supporting \documentstyle[12pt]{article} and \documentstyle[12pt]{book}. To support such things may involve asking the question "What design would one have for a 12pt journal?", to which the real answer may be "One wouldn't actually have a 12pt journal." As an alternative to "making the cut-page size depend on the font-size" (which seems the consequence of the 2.09 way of doing things), it might be worth considering "making the font-size depend on the target page-size". E.g. rather than having the user go \documentstyle[11pt,twocolumn]{article} and (having measured distance between the crop-marks) deducing the size of paper for which the design is intended, it might make more sense for the user to go \documentstyle[...b5]{article} and get a one-column 10 on 11.5 design intended for B5 paper, or \documentstyle[...b5,twocolumn]{article} and get a two-column 9 on 10.5 design for B5, or \documentstyle[...demisemioctavo]{article} to get an error message along the lines "Sorry. No single-column design is available for the demisemioctavo paper-size." Designs could then be limited to combinations of paper-size and layout that a real journal might conceivably use. REFERENCES [1] Gillian Page, Robert Campbell & Jack Meadows. "Journal publishing: principles and practice", Butterworths, 1987. ISBN 0-408-10716-2. [2] Hugh Williamson. "Methods of Book Design", Yale University Press, 1983. ISBN 0-300-03035-5. [3] "The Chicago Manual of Style", Chicago University Press, 1982. ISBN 0-226-10390-0. [4] Ruari McLean, "The Thames and Hudson Manual of Typography", Thames and Hudson, 1980. ISBN 0-500-68022-1. \end{verbatim}\end{footnotesize} \begin{center} --- \end{center} \begin{footnotesize}\begin{verbatim} From: Sebastian Rahtz Date: Mon, 4 Mar 91 11:11:40 gmt ... writes: > My feeling on the standard document styles (and this is the way > that I teach this in my LaTeX classes) is that they DEFINE the > structures that appear in a document type, but only give an > EXAMPLE of the appearance of those structures as printed. My yes, fine. a good approach. but it is not very efficient if the examples are not directly useable. you are talking about people writing new style files, but 99.9% of the punters have no clue even where the style files *are* let alone what to do to amend them. I applaud David Rhead's notes. Lamport states clearly that he consulted document designers when he created the examples styles; history seems to show that not many people agree with his style designers, so lets at least try again and make LaTeX acceptable to a few more people. Would anyone like to claim that LaTeX's defaults are acceptable to any publisher they have dealt with? I'd suggest that the defaults are quite suitable for computer science technical reports; does not LaTeX aspire to be a professional tool? > Rather than trying to do something like say, let's make article > look as much like some "standard" appearance for articles (good > luck), let's create good structure definitions in our styles, the two are not opposed I was interested by David's reflection that [12pt]{article} was contradictory. I suggest that the reason it exists is that people use `article' for 90% of their daily work (like quick reports on what they are up to, or class notes) *not* for journal articles. its a misnomer, IMHO. I have never yet produced a document for use outside this building that did not require a style different from `article' - are there *any* journals which would accept it? This is no reflection, of course, on LL's work! I just think the style designers he talked to are unrepresentative of the profession. These discussions often concentrate on headings, by the way. Lets not forget lists. Maybe David can tell us the ISO standard for vertical space between items in an enumerated list PS what puts me off going away and playing with these ideas in sample styles is a slight fear that the style interface will be very different from what I have now. After hearing Frank talk about the concept of an environment stack driven by rules, I have been lying awake at night trying to decide what I think. If that *is* the model to adopt, then it affects a lot of the ways one thinks about style files. \end{verbatim}\end{footnotesize} \begin{center} --- \end{center} \begin{footnotesize}\begin{verbatim} From: David Rhead ... Date: 4 Mar 91 15:43:11 Sebastian asks whether I can find an ISO standard for vertical space between items in an enumerated list. I doubt whether there is such an ISO standard (although we don't have the standards here for me to browse through). My impression is that ISO might pronounce on document-structure and on things like SGML, but that they are unlikely to pronounce on details of typographic design and "house style". I haven't been able to find any particular views expressed about lists in books on typographic design, either (except for Jan White - see below). We do have British Standards for browsing. Those for theses, manuals and reports (4821, 4884 and 4811) don't express any views on lists (although they do seem to generally like arabic numbering). Jan White devotes pages 88-92 of "Graphic Design for the Electronic Age" to lists. As a non-guru, I wouldn't lay lists out like Jan White (not in a book that has non-indented paragraphs, anyway), since it leaves the reader unclear about where paragraphs end. In documents that have non-indented paragraphs, I wouldn't put extra space between list items (because I'd want the reader to be able to distinguish between "list within paragraph" and "list at end of paragraph", and hence to be able to distinguish one paragraph from the next). But then Jan White is a guru and I'm not. Martin Bryan devotes pages 328-333 of "SGML: an author's guide" to how a particular "sample DTD" treats lists, but this doesn't answer Sebastian's query either. (This particular DTD allows the author to over-ride "house style" by specifying the numbering sequence to be used. I was surprised to see such emphasis given to a feature that over-rides "house style", since I thought that SGML was intended to help deliver documents that conform to a "house style".) \end{verbatim}\end{footnotesize} \begin{center} --- \end{center} \begin{footnotesize}\begin{verbatim} Date: Mon, 4 Mar 91 16:29:09 CET Comments: Originally-From: Don Hosek My feeling on the standard document styles (and this is the way that I teach this in my LaTeX classes) is that they DEFINE the structures that appear in a document type, but only give an EXAMPLE of the appearance of those structures as printed. My approach to style design is to, after some preliminaries, input the base style (report/letter/book/article) which defines the category of documents that I'm working in. Rather than trying to do something like say, let's make article look as much like some "standard" appearance for articles (good luck), let's create good structure definitions in our styles, make it easy to adjust the styles with the outline I gave above, and provide multiple versions of how those classes of documents could appear. \end{verbatim}\end{footnotesize} \begin{center} --- \end{center} \begin{footnotesize}\begin{verbatim} From: N.POPPELIER@NL.ELSEVIER Date: Tue, 5 Mar 91 12:45:21 +0000 I'd like to reply to David Rhead's recent contributions to this list. 1. His summary of page sizes and typefaces for book and journal publishing is of course interesting in its own right, but its relevance with respect to the discussion going on this list is not high -- this is not meant as a personal criticism! Getting the sizes and typefaces right for a document style for scientific books or journals always turns out to be the easiest part, in my experience. LaTeX needs more tools for designing page layouts, font sets -- the new font selection scheme is already a major improvement -- and section headings, but summaries of page sizes or section heading schemes are a bit beside the point here. A few details: 1.1. As for the use of typeface sizes >10pt: production of camera ready copy on a larger page frame, using \normalsize = 12pt, followed by photographic reduction, is normal practice here. `What design would one have for a 12pt journal?' is not the right question. 1.2. Times Roman can never be the normal font as long as the only font _all_ TeX sites have is Computer Modern. Far more important: the new font selection scheme combined with the virtual-font mechanism enables you to make a document-style option for _any_ font you like. 1.3. As for Sebastian's comment: there is nothing wrong with using `article', especially with \baselinestretch > 1.0 and in combination with the 11pt or 12pt option, for producing a preprint of a research paper. In our, i.e. Elsevier's, case the printed version produced by the author is excellent for conventional copy-editing. For compuscripts, it doesn't even matter what the author uses to print his article, since we put in a new document style during the production stage. Only in a very limited number of cases do we accept the printed version for actual production of the book or journal. So `are there *any* journals which would accept it?' is the wrong question, at least in Elsevier's case. 2. The paper on reference lists concentrates too much on layout and not enough on structure. For a, in my humble opinion, much more valuable discussion of LaTeX 3.0, reference lists and BibTeX I'd like to refer to the talk Frank Mittelbach gave at the Cork conference last year. As for `standards in academic publishing': there aren't any! At one of the first meetings of the Dutch TeX Users Group there was a discussion about this and a staff member of Kluwer Scientific Publishers argued that every publisher has his own standards. It's the same here at ESP: every publishing unit within our company has its own standards, and even though there is something like an `ESP house style', there is also plenty of variation. I'm totally opposed to the idea of having different coding schemes for different systems of citation. In my opinion, this goes completely against the basic idea behind LaTeX and SGML, namely separation of form and contents. Consider the amount of re-coding when switching from the number system to the name-year system! To David's review I'd like to add that \bibitem's have no sub-division, at least not one that is indicated by explicit control sequences (`tags'). Instead, the tagging of \bibitem's is done _outside_ LaTeX, which has always struck me as odd. \end{verbatim}\end{footnotesize} \begin{center} --- \end{center} \begin{footnotesize}\begin{verbatim} From: MITTELBACH FRANK Date: Thu, 7 Mar 91 12:17:48 CET Here is an answer from Leslie to Davids mail about sizes and a few comments of my own. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- he'd had to make to get a LaTeX-ed book that didn't scream "I've been produced by (La)TeX!", and could be published. LaTeX output screams "I've been produced by LaTeX" because it has been produced with the same standard document style that every other LaTeX user uses. As long as there are standard styles, that's going to be the case. And that's fine with me. journals tend to ignore B5 and A4 When there is a standard journal, there will be a standard journal style. Until then, journals who want to typeset using LaTeX will have to design their own styles. As long as the printers used by 99.99997% of LaTeX users use either 8-1/2" X 11" or A4 paper, the standard LaTeX styles will be designed to be printed on that paper. Similarly, until there is a standard-sized book, the standard LaTeX "book" style will be for 8-1/2" X 11" or A4 paper, so they can be used while writing the book. (This may come as a surprise to some of the younger members of the TeX community raised during the television age, but books actually have to be written--a process that takes orders of magnitude longer than typesetting.) Thus, "book" describes the logical structures that are handled, not the size and shape of the typeset output. Leslie Lamport ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- I agree with David insofar as the standard styles do not conform to general practice at least in europe. But the aim of the standard styles is to provide a layout that is displaying the contents in a logical way, down to six levels of sectional units etc. Or say it in another way, the LaTeX styles will work with any kind of document that use their tags. This is often not true for special styles. We certainly have to try making standard styles that will be usable by many sites without much adjustments, I agree that at the moment nearly every user (to my experience in Germany) fiddles around with the settings because the standard University style is sooooo much different, but we should keep styles that support documents they the current styles do. Adding better support for the two main paper sizes namly Laserprinter A4 or American size is certainly necessary, and should be part of the document style since it usually effects quite a few parameter. The current situation in Europe is not satisfactory with 10 different A4 styles that all have different problems. \end{verbatim}\end{footnotesize} \begin{center} --- \end{center} \begin{footnotesize}\begin{verbatim} From: "Nelson H.F. Beebe" Date: Mon, 4 Mar 91 12:47:55 MST ... we should make sure to avoid using style file names longer than 8 characters (PC DOS strikes again). Even though most TeX implementations on the PC simply drop the extra characters, and find the right file, when users employ the truncated name and then port their files back to other systems, they discover that LaTeX cannot find their style files, and may have to resort to a TeXpert for help. ... \end{verbatim}\end{footnotesize} \begin{center} --- \end{center} \begin{footnotesize}\begin{verbatim} From: David Rhead ... Date: 3 Apr 91 11:57:22 You may remember my entry about "standard styles" on March 3rd. Here are a few comments about the subsequent comments. I started on March 3rd by recalling that Frank had mentioned (at Cork) the idea of having both: 1. style files that emulate the effect of the 2.09 standard styles, book, article, report, etc. 2. some additional style files, analogous to, but different from, the present book, article and report, plus a "conference proceedings" style. [I hope I've remembered Frank's remarks correctly, and that (2) isn't just a figment of my imagination.] My suggestions were about (2). I don't know how definite Frank's plans are about "having some additional style files". If no-one has time to do anything, neither my suggestions nor the subsequent comments matter much anyway. But if someone has time to do something about (2), they might as well try to make the style files practically useful. This could be either by having designs that are aimed at a phototypesetter, on which "print size" will also be "publication size" (which was the scenario I assumed) or by having designs that are intended for printing "too big" followed by photographic reduction for publication (as mentioned by Nico). If something is done, please could the corresponding style files have comments stating the design assumptions, e.g. "This design is intended for ultimate publication (without reduction) on demi-octavo paper. If printed on bigger paper, it produces crop marks to show the demi-octavo target area." or "This design is intended for ultimate publication on B5 paper. To achieve the effect intended by the designer, you must photoreduce the LaTeX-ed output to 70%" or "This design is only intended for use while you are writing your book. Unless you are proficient at writing LaTeX style-files, you are advised to submit your book to a publisher whose staff can supply style-files that will re-format the book prior to publication.". I.e. the assumptions should be made clear, so that people know what they have to do to get the effect the designer intended with the style-files that form part of the standard distribution, and can make changes (if necessary to keep their publisher happy) from a position of understanding the designer's assumptions/intentions rather than from a position of ignorance. I'd have thought that Leslie's concern about people who are at the "writing" stage, and are using standard laserprinter paper, would be catered for by (1), i.e. the style-files that emulate the 2.09 standard styles. Frank reports Leslie as saying "book" describes the logical structures that are handled This is obviously true in the sense that LaTeX 2.09's book.sty etc. define the logical structures that LaTeX 2.09's "book style" handles. But what if the logical structures that the 2.09 book.sty etc. handle aren't quite the logical structures of "a book" as understood by the rest of the publishing industry? See, for example, pages 4 and 5 of the "Chicago Manual of Style" (which has its origins pre-television) and pages 157-161 of Jan White's post-television "Graphic Design for the Electronic Age". A move towards the industry's structures would be "a good thing" (e.g. it would make it easier to implement design decisions like "within front matter we do this" and "within back matter we do that"). If questions arise about whether any "additional style files, analogous to, ... the present book, etc." should implement 2.09 structures or "publishing-industry standard" structures, I'd suggest a move towards the "publishing-industry standard" structures. \end{verbatim}\end{footnotesize} \begin{center} --- \end{center} \begin{footnotesize}\begin{verbatim} From: Don Hosek Date: Sun, 3 Mar 91 12:23:00 PST My feeling on the standard document styles (and this is the way that I teach this in my LaTeX classes) is that they DEFINE the structures that appear in a document type, but only give an EXAMPLE of the appearance of those structures as printed. My approach to style design is to, after some preliminaries, input the base style (report/letter/book/article) which defines the category of documents that I'm working in. Rather than trying to do something like say, let's make article look as much like some "standard" appearance for articles (good luck), let's create good structure definitions in our styles, make it easy to adjust the styles with the outline I gave above, and provide multiple versions of how those classes of documents could appear. \end{verbatim}\end{footnotesize}