[pdftex] Surprising opinion about hz-type features

[The Thanh Han]

Hello Damien,

thanks for bringing the article to discussion here. Here are
my (perhaps biased) opinions:

- the article made objections to some of the points claimed
  by URW, Hermann Zapf and others. I more or less agree with
  the objections in the article.

- however I do not agree with main intention of the article, ie
  to show/prove that glyph scaling leads to reduced quality.
  The objections in the article are not convining enough to
  me. It only showed that there are some inaccuracies in
  what URW/Zapf/Adobe claims. Given the fact that those
  claims are made by the authors of the technique, it's
  quite normal that the effect/usefulness has been
  exaggerated a little bit.

- glyph scaling is only one of the techniques used by
  Gutenberg and the hz-program; it's not meant to be the
  single silver-bullet that would solve the problem with bad
  interword spacing. The hz-program does much more than just
  glyph scaling.

- like other techniques, glyph scaling is also a double
  edged sword: it can help and also hurt. The users should
  be aware of that.

- I use glyph scaling myself and find it useful, especially
  when you want to give a bit more flexibility to paragraph
  formatting and there is no other possibilities to do so.
  The limit I find useful is +/- 2%, but when looking
  closely I can also see the effect of glyph scaling at that
  limit. I guess -1% to +2% is a better choice.


Regards,
Thanh


On Sat, Feb 23, 2008 at 09:36:40AM +0100, Damien Wyart wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> I wonder if some of you are aware of this article
> http://home.no.net/toeng/justering/gut_hz/gutenberg_hz_english.html
> which is also refered by 
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hz-program
> 
> If you have opinions on it, I am interested. Personnaly, I have a hard
> time believing Zapf and Bringhurst are completely wrong ; I am almost
> sure they have had occasions to check the B42 by themselves in museums
> and libraries.
> 
> I have contacted the author to point him some PDFTeX articles and
> documents, as he doesn't quote it at all.
> 
> 
> Best,
> 
> -- 
> Damien Wyart
> _______________________________________________
> pdftex mailing list
> pdftex at tug.org
> http://tug.org/mailman/listinfo/pdftex