Re: [OT] Recommended typefaces

Steve Hayes wrote:
What would you recommend as a decent font for an A4 page, and an A5 page?

Font face seems to be a matter of personal preference. Standard
practice seems to be to use sans-serif fonts for headings, and serif
fonts for body text, apparently on the grounds of readability. My eyes
must be different; as time goes by, I find myself struggling more with
serifs, so I now tend to use Helvetica or similar for nearly everything.

A more important consideration, in my opinion, is the difficulty for the
reader of jumping from the end of a line to the beginning of a new line.
Thus, the font size should be such as to limit you to no more than
about 15 words/line, or perhaps even 10 words/line. Full-width A4 is
therefore suitable if you have very large letters. I've found, myself,
that I'm inclined to use two columns on A4 for anything important. I'll
also left justify text wherever possible. Fully justified text is OK if
you don't use long words, e.g. something intended for children.

Of course narrow columns are difficult to get right with primitive word
processors such as MS-Word, but if you use a proper desktop publisher
(Interleaf [*] is my favourite) you can get good results. LaTeX is also
good but requires a bit of effort in terms of initial learning, and it's
pretty weak where diagrams are concerned.

[*] The original Unix version. Interleaf subsequently produced a
version for Windows, but that one doesn't seem to be as good. A friend
of mine recommends FrameMaker for Windows, but I don't use Windows often
enough to be able to judge.

--
Peter Moylan http://www.pmoylan.org

Please note the changed e-mail and web addresses. The domain
eepjm.newcastle.edu.au no longer exists, and I can no longer
reliably receive mail at my newcastle.edu.au addresses.
The optusnet address still has about 3 months of life left.
.

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