🚀 go-pugleaf

In <l9lnlrINNls8@utkcs2.cs.utk.edu> eijkhout@cupid.cs.utk.edu (Victor Eijkhout) writes:

>|> > If I would have had any say in the choice of paper I would have
>|> > opted for parchment, in real leather binding :-)
>|> 
>|> Probably would have taken Baskerville even worse. Today's smooth
>|> papers are largely an outgrowth of the demands of the
>|> transitionals and moderns as well as certain illustrative
>|> printing processes.

>Have you ever seen a page printed by Bodoni himself?
[...]
>That paper is of high quality, but nowhere near as smooth as what
>is used nowadays, for instance in my book :-) And Bodoni's type
>is much more demanding that Baskerville.

And if I remember rightly, Updike criticises Bodoni's printing precisely
because the paper is too rough. (Haven't had the privilege of visiting
Antwerp myself, so I can't comment personally.) Likewise Baskerville; the
typographers were too far ahead of the paper technology.

Now, I would be the first to agree that Updike is unnecessarily harsh on
modern typefaces, but on the other hand, just because Bodoni did it doesn't
make it good.

Jeremy

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| Jeremy Gibbons <jeremy@cs.aukuni.ac.nz>  CS Dept, Auckland Univ, NZ |
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