Typography, page composition, TeX, Quark, alternatives to InDesign

[A2D2]

Hi. InDesign may have many advantages (user interface, community support, suite of related products, etc.) but specifically in terms of typography, we are taught that it is page composition and kerning algorithms that place InDesign ahead of word processors.

For example, a page of text in MS Word will have rivers of white and there is no optical kerning feature for fonts which need a bit of extra help.

My question is whether alternative page layout typesetting software such as Tex and Quark can replicate, rival, or surpass InDesign with regard to typography, either out-of-the-box or with additional configuration? 

Coming back to the MS Word example, out-of-the box, i.e. using default settings, a page of text will have rivers of white flowing through it. But with some configuration of justification settings and hyphenation a designer might get better results.

Was just wondering the situation with Tex, Quark, and others.

[Robert at ID-Tasker]

Are you looking for a way of finding those "white rivers" in the InDesign?

[A2D2]

Are you looking for a way of finding those "white rivers" in the InDesign?

By @Robert at ID-Tasker

No.

Just wondering whether TeX etc. is as good as InDesign, typographically speaking.

[Robert at ID-Tasker]

@A2D2

Right. But if you would need a solution to find those rivers - please let me know 😉

[BobLevine]

Sounds to me like you're looking for some magic setting to give you perfect typography. That does not exist in any application including InDesign. InDesign however should give you an excellent starting point but then it's up to the user to set things up globally and if needed manually.

Finally, there is no perfect setting. My rule is that if it looks good, it is good.

[Derek Cross]

Consider Tracking.

[Randy Hagan]

I don't know about Tex, but QuarkXPress has a couple of rather esoteric type packing features that can be used to create better type — kerning/tracking in thousandths of an em, the ability to create custom kerning pairs, etc.

If you're an all-out type snob, you can lay out some really beautiful type blocks with Quark. Back in the early '90s when I ran a type service bureau — remember those — my shop developed custom type packing for some 40 fonts using Quark's custom typefitting capabilities. For us, it saved time in the long run to invest that attention up front instead of fine tuning every typesetting job on the fly, and gave us a unique product differentiator to offer high-style output that our other two competitors in the market couldn't match.

The shop was started as a traditional typesetting operation purchasing a half-million bucks of Quadex Q5000 phototypesetting system with four terminals, and a reputation for providing high-quality type galleys and typographic page setup for the ad industry and select independent graphic designers.  We blew some serious labor time creating those custom-kerned font sets to approximate the typefitting output of that old-school Quadex setup people paid through the nose for. We had a few takers — maybe enough to cover our cost to develop those custom-kerned font sets, maybe not. 

But when art directors discovered they could set their own type with QuarkXPress, and to a lesser extent, PageMaker and ReadySetGo, the typefitting lapses that would have persnickety art directors sending galleys back to us for redos flew right on by when they were doing a mediocre job packing type in house. To the point, I believe, that most ad agencies and clients can no longer tell the difference between mild attention and meticulous care setting type. 

And even if you could tell the difference, InDesign offers mostly equivalent capabilities of Quark today, with the exception of building custom kerning pairs within font tables for easier future use. And to be honest, these days I don't know if that difference is worth much of anything anymore.

That's my two cents, for as little as it's worth.

Randy

[rob day]

Coming back to the MS Word example, out-of-the box, i.e. using default settings, a page of text will have rivers of white flowing through it. But with some configuration of justification settings and hyphenation a designer might get better results.

Hi @A2D2 , I'm guessing that would be true with any of the apps to a certain degree, including InDesign. Here is a column of text with InDesign’s default Justification on the right vs. a custom settings on the left.

[Susan Culligan]

Besides hyphenation, what other custom setting did you use for this lovely example?

[rob day]

Hi @Susan Culligan 

[Susan Culligan]

Thanks!

[Peter Kahrel]

InDesign and (La)Tex have a paragraph composer, something that no other system has (they use line composers). Typographically, Latex and InDesign are pretty much equal. Latex doesn't do optical kerning, but some custom kerning can take care of that.

InDesign is much easier to use, especially if you set a text with floats. They can be difficult to handle in Latex; in InDesign is easy.

Latex is much more flexible with footnotes and indexes.

Take your pick!

[A2D2]

InDesign is much easier to use, especially if you set a text with floats.

By @Peter Kahrel

"Float" i.e. TeX term for floating elements -- in InDesign, a text box or some other independent insert on a page, right?

[Robert at ID-Tasker]

InDesign is much easier to use, especially if you set a text with floats.

By @Peter Kahrel

"Float" i.e. TeX term for floating elements -- in InDesign, a text box or some other independent insert on a page, right?

By @A2D2

InLined or Anchored in text. 

[TᴀW]

Floats is a wonderful idea in LaTex, and InDesign doesn't have anything like it as far as I know.

It's a graphic element that's a bit like an anchored object except that it can position itself in the nearest available spot to its text anchor without being actually part of the text flow. This means that text can flow freely around it.

For instance, you can set a float's position to be at the top of a page, and it will position itself at the top of next available page, even if that is on the next page.

Anchored objects in InDesign are much more limited in that the objects must be on the same spread as their anchor. So if the anchored object is set to be at the top of the text frame and this causes the anchor itself to jump to the next page, it drags the object to the next page as well, leaving an impossible white gap on the previous page.

Floats in LaTex are much smarter.

I once tried to script floats in InDesign, it actually worked very nicely and saved loads of time for my own projects, but would have taken a lot more work to turn into a commercial project.

[Peter Kahrel]

'Float' is not a Latex term, it's a general typesetting term for an element in a separate frame. It's not an (inline) anchored element, since, as Ariel pointed out, they're tied to the page where the anchor is.

Latex floats have various positional parameters (like InDesign's anchored floats) because you have to tell Latex where it should place them. On InDesign you don't need that, you just grab them and place them.

In Latex, getting floats where you want them can be a hassle, it can take several runs to work out the combination of float position and how text runs around it.