[scribus] Quotes.

Tornóci László torlasz at net.sote.hu
Mon Aug 8 07:24:24 UTC 2011


On 08/08/2011 01:31 AM, John Ghormley KJ4UFG wrote:
> On Sat, Aug 6, 2011 at 3:12 PM, Tornóci László<torlasz at net.sote.hu>  wrote:
>
>> On 08/06/2011 07:23 PM, John Ghormley KJ4UFG wrote:
>> ...
>>
>>   I suppose if you want quote marks that curve from the top in toward the
>>> quote on both ends there is more than one keystroke on each end involved.
>>>   I
>>> totally eschew those marks as tedious and a bit old fashioned, but to each
>>> his own.  Using them would slightly complicate the matter by adding two
>>> more
>>> keystrokes.
>>>
>>
>> Curly quotes are not 'old fashioned' at all. You see them rarely, but
>> that's because dumb quotes (these: ' and ") are used instead of them. Dumb
>> quotes are leftovers from typewriter technology, and they should NEVER be
>> used in typeset documents. The problem is: before the digital revolution
>> of the printing industry, people got properly trained how to typeset a
>> document. Now anyone can produce something that looks like a typeset
>> document. I had absolutely no training in typography, but when I set out to
>> produce my own book for medical students, I quickly realized my
>> deficiencies, so I took the time and studied several books about typography.
>> If you do that, you get to know typographic tradition and you will be able
>> to produce documents that look really professional. Of course you can
>> break any of the typographical rules, if you want, but at least learn
>> them! It sort of opens up your eyes: you will be able to tell, what's
>> wrong with a document that doesn't look right. My suggestion is to everyone,
>> who regularly uses Scribus to read a good book like: The elements of
>> typographic style by Robert Bringhurst.
>>
>>                                         Yours: Laszlo
>>
> You must feel clairvoyant, Laszlo.
No, I just made a guess.

> I express an opinion and you, albeit
> incorrectly, assume I have no experience with typography prior to DTP.
A guess may be incorrect.

> But,
> obviously, I should be as "informed" as you or I have no business creating a
> typeset document.  Geez, what an attitude!  You must be quite insecure about
> all your typographic knowledge to demean someone you know NOTHING about
> simply to express your opinion on a topic.
You misunderstand me. My intention was not to compare your and my 
typographic knowledge, and definitely not to suggest "you have no 
business creating a typeset document". I don't want to start a crusade 
to keep people without proper typographic training to produce typeset 
documents. This happens all the time whether I like it or not. I simply 
wanted to share my own experience with the members of this list. I 
really used to be a typographic idiot, not knowing and not caring about 
the traditions. However, I liked nice books a lot, and by chance I had 
to learn typography. This helped me enormously to produce nice looking 
documents, and I learnt that there is a lot of value in the typographic 
traditions, paying attention to details that I couldn't care less 
before. That was a really valuable and useful experience for me, and I 
wanted to share that with this forum.
It is useless to start a flame war out of this.

				Yours: Laszlo



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