Computers and right justified margins (Was spaces)

["Smith, Martin" <smithmr -at- ENCORP -dot- COM>]

This reply got me thinking. A long time back I completed an internship
at a medium-sized daily newspaper. At the time, we were using two
mainframe computers for all writing and page layout activities. Pages
were composed on dedicated terminals and output to an imagesetter. News
stories were typeset with right justified margins. The system actually
altered the way in which it drew individual characters instead of
tweaking the spacing between characters, words, and sentences. So the
question is, why can't the Pentium II computer on my desk accomplish the
same thing? I thought that Adobe's multiple master fonts were supposed
to make high quality typesetting on the desktop a reality. As far as I
know, none of the major desktop publishing programs alters the shape of
individual characters in order to right justify text. There is still a
noticeable difference in quality between documents produced on the
desktop and documents produced using dedicated typesetting equipment.


> -----Original Message-----
> From: GM Vick [SMTP:gmv -at- NETCOM -dot- COM]
> Sent: Wednesday, August 12, 1998 12:51 PM
> To:   TECHWR-L -at- LISTSERV -dot- OKSTATE -dot- EDU
> Subject:      Re: spaces
>
> The standard when typewriters were widely used was two spaces. Since
> computers/desktop publishing became the prominent way to create
> documents, one space has been the preferred method by many. This
> started,
> I believe, because at first people were encouraged to do as
> typeSETTERs
> did, and have both right and left margins justified. If you have two
> spaces fter the period in this ituation, you get really ugly gaps
> between words. Then people realized that you get really ugly gaps with
> both margins justified no matter what you do, so left justification
> with one
> period between sentences became standard practice in computed
> environments.


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