Confusing textwrap parameters, and request for RE help

[Dan Sommers]

On Fri, 27 Mar 2020 15:46:54 -0600
Michael Torrie <torriem at gmail.com> wrote:

> On 3/27/20 3:28 PM, Dan Stromberg wrote:

> > Back when I was a kid, and wordprocessors were exemplified by
> > WordStar, I heard about a study the conclusion of which was that
> > aligned right edges were harder to read - that it was better to
> > align on the left and leave the right ragged.

I remember WordStar, and its text editor cousin WordMaster.

> > But one study doesn't establish truth.

> I've read poorly-typeset, self-published books that were really hard
> to read due to the way the full justification worked out.  Not sure if
> that's just due to the poor typesetting job (a word processor probably
> did it), or the font, or what.  There must be some tricks that
> publishers use to both justify and keep the text looking good and
> readable ...

Ask Donald Knuth why he invented TeX, and why math is enclosed in
literal $ (U+0024) characters.  ;-)

Also, there are word processors and there are word processors.  From an
aesthetics perspective, TeX has been producing beautiful printed pages
(and pairs and sequences of pages) for decades, Word still didn't the
last time I looked (maybe 8 or 10 years ago?), and there are dozens or
more in between.

> ... At one point in the print world, the majority of what I read is
> fully justified, yet still quite readable.  Even now I think most
> published books I've seen recently are fully justified. These days,
> seems like more and more is ragged-right, such as magazines, which is
> probably due to the prevalence of digital media where it's probably
> easier to generate and easier to read on small screens.

If content producers did their job well, a 2540 pixel per inch printed
page, a desktop 72 or 96 pixel per inch display screen, and a handheld
320 pixel per inch screen would all be optimized separately (through one
sort of style sheet mechanism or another).  But these days, they spend
more time and money on ads and SEO than typesetting.

Dan

-- 
“Atoms are not things.” – Werner Heisenberg
Dan Sommers, http://www.tombstonezero.net/dan