🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <C17JH4.C6C@news.cso.uiuc.edu> ritley@uimrl7.mrl.uiuc.edu () writes:

   [...]

   I know that typographic artists devote
   quite a lot of time to structuring fonts
   for maximum aesthetic appeal.

   What I would like to know is whether, given
   a font size, there is an "optimal"
   \baselineskip for "single space" and 
   "double space" type.

Double spacing is a typewriter habit. Period.

Aesthetic appeal is not somehing that exists independently
of what you are doing. I once set a piece of type with
large baselineskip and raggedright, and someone immediately
commented that it looked like a poem.

Very general connotations of line distances:

Tight spacing: academic book. Will be pored over, so
doesn't have to be excessively readable. Books are expensive
enough as they are so a bit of paper savings is appreciated.

Normal spacing: (20% over?) novel, or just run-of-the-mill
document. Readability is everything.

Wide spacing: art book or volume of poems.
The book is expensive enough as it
is, so we might as well waste some more paper.
Besides, the amount of text is limited, so
spreading it out over the page will even improve
the looks.

--
Victor Eijkhout ................................ `There are also a few bugs,
Department of Computer Science .......... though not as many as I've come to
University of Tennessee ............... expect in new [MS]Windows products.'
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