> I am trying to identify why a typeset page looks so different -- > more professional -- than a page from a word processor using > the same margins, typeface, font and so on.
OK. I found the answer while taking a break from writing. It's all in the spacing: inter-letter, inter-word and so on.
G'day Rich,
The real question is not What but Why. IMO, it's because 96 dpi (monitor screen resolution) can never approximate the resolution of the printed page (300, 600, 2540, whatever).
If you take a purely typesetting application (troff, TeX) and do not compromise its typesetting algorithms for monitor resolution you will have just that -- a typesetting engine. But you will never have WYSIWYG because that requires, at the least, compromise. And every compromise in the direction of monitor _must_ be at the expense of print.
As you compromise you will force your algorithms to come closer to the absolute number 96. Now, smart marketers can redescribe "compromise" as WYSIWYG, or "user friendly", or graphical, or even "intuitive". But until the day that monitor resolutions become equal to or exceed printing resolutions you will have to choose between "ease of use" and "quality of output".
As an illustration, really play with some text (WAVY NAVY or somesuch) in _any_ application and try to judge the results of your manipulations via a monitor. I'll bet you give up very quickly and start killing trees with abandon.
Even the best word processor on the market from a typesetting point of view (FrameMaker) suffers from a lack of absolute control because of its WYSIWYG requirements.
BTW, if wordprocessors and typesetters are so different think of the problems that Hollywood must face where a single word can be 10 feet high, 50 feet long and have a resolution of squillions!
My $0.02
Robert Thorsby
