Also surprised Owen hasn't brought Markdown into the mix here. Seems like the perfect ASCII/monospace style for meaningful formatting.
On Mar 17, 2013, at 10:27 AM, Steve Smith <[email protected]> wrote: > Two things come to mind on this topic: > Tower of Babel > Uncanny Valley > > (I hope my indentation, use of Case and parenthesis didn't throw anyone off > too far!) > > When the Web was young, Print Designers went simply *apeshit* over this new > HTML thing, in both senses of the term. Some had a great good time playing > with all the possibilities but most just got surly about losing the precise > control they had come to expect from print. Designers used to *literally* > attend a press check to make sure that what they specced into the camera and > typographic work *was* exactly what they wanted... and sometimes there would > be modest changes made on the spot while the presses idled in the background. > > I remember it being a perq of the job, though not without it's own stress, > and a good "closure". A trip to Denver or San Francisco or New York at the > end of a finished job, and once the press-check was done and the presses > started rolling, you didn't have to worry about someone saying... "oh.. one > more thing!". The client was usually at the press check too, so if they saw > something *after* the print run was done, they just got tight lipped and held > their tongue. I think the apparent ease and convenience of making changes > was the BANE of designers once WYSIWIG got rolling. An excuse for clients to > apply "late binding" to content... run their own deadline right up to the > press deadline and leave it to the designers to incorporate last minute > changes hours before it went to press. I think it was *this*, not the > challenges of learning newfangled computers, that drove many old school print > designers out of the Biz. > > As for WYSIWIS... this has been a problem with *color* forever, and myriad > strategies have been adopted to mitigate it, from the Pantone(tm) color > specification system to elaborate attempts to resolve the mechanical/optical > as well as *perceptual* differences between reflective (print) and emissive > (computer screens) and between additive and subtractive color. And > referencing the "uncanny valley"... getting it "almost right" can be more > disturbing than merely "in the ballpark". >> It is a bit humorous: the "What You See Is What I See" idea .. and its >> little brother WYSIWYG, but there is also an interesting point to be >> made. It seems to be _hard_ to obtain! >> >> This is one of the reasons, IMHO, that twitter is so popular. I've >> started using it quite a bit simply because it _is_ so readable and >> very fast to do so. And it definitely has the greatest info content >> per sq. in. of any media I'm aware of. >> >> On thinking more about it, the chief problem I have with formatting in >> email is that our various machines and their apps have absurdly >> different ways of setting these things. >> >> So when I use GMail's web-mail system, it allows four text sizes, tiny >> to huge. I have absolutely no idea how these translate to your >> screen. I've resorted to creating images of email, sending it to the >> sender, and asking "is this what you meant me to see"? and gotten a >> horrified, Gawd No response. >> >> What I find is Silos of Usage: i.e. folks on Windows running Exchange >> will agree between themselves. GMail-ers ditto. Mac mail.app-ers >> too. Oh, and naturally Twitter folk. And naturally the Unformatted >> Text folk, bless them. >> >> Maybe we should have an agreed upon style that we all share and a few >> Windows, Mac, Linux hipsters transmit instructions on how to obtain >> that style with each of the Silos? >> >> -- Owen >> >> ============================================================ >> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv >> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College >> to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com > > > ============================================================ > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College > to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
