Quote:
Originally Posted by JD Gumby
Most paper prose books (barring poetry/lyric sections and suchline) go edge-to-edge, indent paragraphs with no space between paragraphs, have line spacing that is half (or less) of the character height (and which can vary slightly from page to page to keep widows & orphans to a minimum), and know how to split paragraphs when there is a page transition.
Is it really so much to ask that machines that can change formatting and font size on the fly get these sorts of thing right? I think not.
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I can't think of any physical books that go edge to edge. A quick measurement on 5 books I have handy show the margins varying from 1.5cm to 2cm on right and left, 2cm to 3cm on the top and 1.8cm to 3cm on the bottom. The first paragraph in each chapter is not indented in 3 of them while the 4th indents all the paragraphs and the 5th doesn't believe in indenting paragraphs. The interline spacing seems to be close to a line-height of 1.2 for four, the 5th uses about 1.4 with 3 of the 5 using about double the interline spacing for paragraph spacing. The other two don't add any extra space between paragraphs.
Looking for pages where a blank line has been left (wider bottom margin) and the first line of the paragraph was moved to the next page, in the glossary in one (Next Generation Firewalls for Dummies), there are as many as two blank lines at the bottom of a page to keep entries on the same page. One example, the single line entry for Limewire is at the bottom of the page with two extra lines worth of blank space and then the entry for Mariposa is at the top of the next page.
Next Generation Firewalls for Dummies by Lawrence C. Miller, CISSP
ISBN: 978-0-470-93955-0
Regards,
David