A small request...and re: your typographical conventions

["David Neeley" <dbneeley -at- gmail -dot- com>]

First, the request:

Could y'all *PLEASE* take care to snip off the extraneous "stuff" from
prior posts when you reply?

To deal with the volume on the list, I am one who subscribes to the
digest mode...and scrolling through the irrelevant c**p is somewhat of
a pain, particularly inasmuch as I do want to see what everyone has to
say. Thanks!

Now, on typography...

I, too, subscribe to keeping things simple. However, I am not much
fond of all capitals for field names, titles, and the like. In my
admittedly subjective opinion, that gives them somewhat too much
visual emphasis. Small caps, though, seem to work quite well for the
purpose.

Next, Harry Bachelor made quite a  point that key caps are "ALWAYS
uppercase and BOLD." He says he does this as an aid for "novices."

Frankly, in a manual for *true* novices, I lean toward one of the many
free keycaps fonts such as
www.WebpagePublicity.com/free-fonts/k/Keycaps Regular.ttf
or  http://www.quadrat.com/freefont.html

There is precious little ambiguity with such a specialized font giving
a "picture" of the proper key. However, it is getting fairly difficult
to find a true "novice" these days.

As for font conventions, to me it depends also on the delivery method.
Since most is onscreen these days even if .pdf delivery, I also tend
to go with the fonts that are designed for that use. In most fonts,
too, I tend to avoid 10-point type where possible. I find 11-point is
often a very good size for most purposes--very readable but not as
space-consumptive as 12 point. This is also my choice for letters I
write for the same reason.

Finally, for the person who spoke of TeX being superior for
typesetting--I fully agree. I often use Lyx for that reason for many
projects that needn't be passed around. For example, I am working on a
book that will likely be offered through POD publishing that I'm doing
in Lyx, as the output will be extremely good from a typographical
standpoint with little effort on my part. That is simply a function of
the tool.

David
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