Manual: Spaces
by doener on 12/9/2025, 12:07:42 AM
https://type.today/en/journal/spaces
Comments
by: Smaug123
On the layout side rather than the "what spaces are available" side, I really recommend <a href="https://gwern.net/doc/design/typography/tex/1981-knuth.pdf" rel="nofollow">https://gwern.net/doc/design/typography/tex/1981-knuth.pdf</a> , the paper in which the Knuth-Plass algorithm for paragraph layout is defined. (The Knuth-Plass algorithm decides how wide spaces should be on each line and which choices of hyphenation out of some predefined set should be used to lay out a paragraph.) It's super readable and generally quite joyful. Knuth describes TeX as a "labor of love", and it shines through that paper.
12/9/2025, 8:52:23 AM
by: dbuxton
One thing I find interesting about discussions of typography in Cyrillic is how poor the overall readability of text is in most fonts compared to Latin because of the relative scarcity of risers and descenders (e.g. pqlt etc)<p>One of my tutors at university claimed that she was able to read 9th century manuscript Cyrillic faster than modern printed books because the orthography was more varied and easier to scan/speed-read.<p>(That wasn't something I found to be true)
12/9/2025, 8:57:43 AM
by: doener
Via <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46198040">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46198040</a>
12/9/2025, 12:08:11 AM