I recall noticing this in your earlier sample asking about loose justification and finding it extremely disconcerting. I didn't bother to mention it at the time because it wasn't the subject of your query.

-- Kent.

kent said:
> and finding it extremely disconcerting

can you say why?

***

eben said:
> because I don’t really like justified text

in my e-book viewer-programs, people can
pick ragged-right if they want, or justification.

for those who prefer and choose justification,
there arises this question about the measure...

it's fully possible for me to let the user choose
whether to use a specific or variable measure,
as well, so the question is "which is the default?"

but aside from user-choice as the trump card,
i wanted to see what the experts here think...

a variable measure will yield better spacing...

-bowerbird

i guess nobody has any big objections

? What does "extremely disconcerting" mean to you?

eliason said:
> What does “extremely disconcerting” mean to you?

what matters is what it means to kent, and he didn't explain,
so i have no information to go on. it might very well be that
any violation of an unwritten rule will make him feel that way.

heck, i myself felt a bit queasy when i first thought of it, just
because it seems so unorthodox. but after a while, i decided
that it wasn't that big of a deal at all. of course, any time that
you deviate from pure compulsiveness while laying out a book,
costs must be paid. the question is whether benefits outweigh.
in this case, i think tighter lines outweigh the variable measure.
at least to the degree that i'm willing to extend the experiment.

***

ricardo said:
> Don’t mistake the lack of comments for lack of objections...
> It could also be lack of interest.

certainly. but my experience here on typophile has been that
many of you go out of their way to tell me your lack of interest.

heck, ricardo, you did it just now...

besides, i just wanted to see if there was a mass of objections,
and learn the specific nature of whatever objections there are...
i think it's pretty clear there is no mass. so even if the absence
is due to "lack of interest", it continues to be meaningful to me.

-bowerbird

I have withheld comment on the bowerbird style, but the pretentious attempt at being a pedant and forced line breaks make my eyes bleed, my scroll finger cramp, and make me say "oh, never mind" also.

Seriously bowerbird, you are going out of your way to make your posts more difficult to read than they need to be. If that's your attempt, congratulations. If not... oh, never mind.

I meant that it was distracting and disruptive. Seemed like the worst of both worlds.

Justification always leads to compromise in internal spacing. The reason one accepts such compromises -- the payoff -- is to have consistent, orderly margins and text blocks, relatively fixed from page to page. A fixed framework removes some of the external variables and allows focus to remain on the internal.

Flush-left/ragged-right exchanges the priority, preferring internal consistency in spacing, and accepting a variable margin.

Your sample had highly variable internal spacing married with constantly changing external margins. The changing margin was actually made more noticeable by the hard line of the alignment.

I can imagine a changing measure working acceptably if the range of variation was kept quite small, so as to be essentially unnoticeable. But I'm not sure you'd gain anything by it.

bowerbird,

The forced line-breaks made me think my browser was malfunctioning. And I have to agree with Sorkin. It is a convention to use your real name here. When I first started, I too used a handle. Someone made a similar comment to me, so I changed it to my real name. In fact, I think I contacted Tiffany Wardle de Sousa directly, and she changed it within the hour. It's also possible to keep your username and just add your real name to your profile. Immediately after doing this I got more and better responses to my questions and feedback. I strongly encourage you to do the same.

nick said:
> yawn.

thanks for your contribution, nick.

-bowerbird

p.s. where's hrant when you need him?

nick-

why did you split your words across lines?

and what do those underscores mean?

-bowerbird