[HN Gopher] The microtype package: Subliminal refinements toward...
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The microtype package: Subliminal refinements towards typographical
perfection [pdf]
Author : Tomte
Score : 74 points
Date : 2023-11-19 12:54 UTC (1 days ago)
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| mbork_pl wrote:
| I worked (very part-time) a typesetting job for 10+ years. We
| were making a journal with (sometimes) pretty narrow columns.
| Microtype was surprisingly helpful, while remaining (almost)
| invisible to a layman's eye. (Once you know about it, you can
| spot the differences in letter widths sometimes.)
|
| Interestingly, Guthenberg used very similar techniques with
| varying the shapes of letters so that the "blackness" of the page
| could be more uniform.
| kccqzy wrote:
| My favorite feature of this package is how it expands/contracts
| letters so that hyphenation is almost entirely gone in a fully
| justified text. I personally hate the hyphenation of words: they
| sometimes create ambiguity (incidental hyphens at the end of a
| line vs hyphens in the original word) and the hyphenation points
| always seem unintuitive to me.
| mbork_pl wrote:
| Fun fact: in Polish typography, you repeat the hyphen at the
| beginning of the next line in the latter case (hyphenation when
| there is a hyphen already).
| vitorsr wrote:
| I should warn you that the stretch that the package performs
| does not preserve the vertical stem widths. Therefore,
| especially at small point sizes, there are perceptible weight
| changes.
|
| In my opinion, the default font expansion value stretch=20 is
| not conservative enough. I would personally recommend not only
| reducing it but also using the selected argument to further
| reduce the expansion of glyphs whose geometry distortion may be
| more easily perceived.
| nextos wrote:
| Came here to say the same thing. Also, it pushes commas, full
| stops, and hyphens to hang over the margin. The typeset outcome
| is much more pleasant to the eye.
| gjvc wrote:
| A delightful document on a delightful subject!
| einpoklum wrote:
| From the fine document:
|
| _Micro-typography is the art of enhancing the appearance and
| readability of a document while exhibiting a minimum degree of
| visual obtrusion. It is concerned with what happens between or at
| the margins of characters, words or lines. Whereas the macro-
| typographical aspects of a document (i.e., its layout) are
| clearly visible even to the untrained eye, micro-typographical
| refinements should ideally not even be recognisable._
|
| However, there don't seem to be any major changes to the package
| since 2021. (Which is not surprising, since it was first released
| in 2004.)
| Finnucane wrote:
| Does there need to be changes?
| vitorsr wrote:
| @dang, this URL submission points to a CTAN mirror, can you
| please change it to the following:
|
| https://mirrors.ctan.org/macros/latex/contrib/microtype/micr...
| __mharrison__ wrote:
| I wish XeLaTex supported microtype...
| Isthatablackgsd wrote:
| It don't? That's weird because I am able to use microtype
| package with XeLaTeX.
|
| Ohhh I see, I look it up. Apparently, it support specific
| feature[0] of microtype in XeLaTeX.
|
| [0] https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/118713/is-
| microtype-...
| pseingatl wrote:
| That's not clear from the document. I couldn't find a clear
| statement. What about LuaLaTeX?
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