[texhax] Gutter on wrong side [with scrbook]

Axel E. Retif axel.retif at mac.com
Wed Aug 19 04:54:35 CEST 2009


On  18 Aug, 2009, at 18:53, Reinhard Kotucha wrote:

> On 18 August 2009 D. R. Evans wrote:
>
>> Reinhard Kotucha said the following at 08/18/2009 04:47 PM :
>>
>>>
>>> The outer margin is always bigger than the inner one for a couple of
>>> good reasons.
>>
>> [...]
>> PS I just picked five novels from my shelves and looked: all had  
>> inner
>> margins that were at least as large as the outer margins.
>
> I proposed to buy a book about typography.

There is some reason to have the inner margins as large ---or close  
to--- the outer margins, especially with relatively modern soft cover  
binding.

The theory is that the eye should see the same blank with the inner  
margins combined as with the outer margin. So one classical proportion  
could be a 6-2-5-4:

  __________________________________
  |       ^ 5            ^ 5        |
  |<->___________ <->___________ <->|
  | 4 |          | 4 |          | 4 |
  |   |          |   |          |   |
  |   |  Text    |   |          |   |
  |   |          |   |          |   |
  |   |          |   |          |   |
  |   |__________| ^ |__________|   |
  |       ^ 6      |      ^ 6       |
  |_______________2+2_______________|

But truth is books don't open flat, especially, as said, soft cover  
books. So, to compensate for the bend in the middle, yo have to make  
inner margins larger, so the eye **effectively** sees the same blank  
in the inner margins combined as with any of the outer margins.

Best,

Axel



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