Publishing: attaining some presence, ideas abandoning whatever cave they were in.

Excerpt from «Typographic products: four pillars»
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Read on Medium: https://medium.com/think-by-shifta/typographic-products-four-pillars-69411b900930

Graphic composition: presentation of typographic forms in a deliberate harmony. In rhetoric terms: ‘dispositio’.

Excerpt from «Typographic products: four pillars»
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Balance of black and white, distribution of three whites: between characters, between words, between lines.

Excerpt from «Typographic products: four pillars»
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A block of writing, a component of the discourse, a basic thesis.

Excerpt from «Typographic products: four pillars»
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Discourse, a complex statement, ideas in a structure, debate, connotation.

Excerpt from «Typographic products: four pillars».
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Actuality, not potentiality. A real macrophenomenon: the sum of all acts of writing.

Excerpt from «Typographic products: four pillars»
Download article: https://www.preedicio.com/obra/obra.html#obra12
#typography

A fully fledged form of communication. As such, only comparable to spoken language.

Excerpt from «Typographic products: four pillars»
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Following up from the previous post about Pages here on Medium, I want to pay more attention to character styles, this time on iOS. My usual set of character-level formatting definitions is as follows:

– italics
– bold
– small caps
– all caps
– code
– link
– some colour in bold, if needed

In more capable applications, such as Nisus Writer Pro and InDesign, I end up having more italic styles, for different languages, and a no-break style, which can be used at the end of the typesetting tasks, when one wants to hone weird-looking ends of lines (fig. 1).

As for Pages on iOS, char styles are hidden three levels deep in the user interface. The steps to get to them are the following:

1. When in text mode, tap on the three-point button, under the typeface name (fig. 2).
2. Here, tap on the character style (the default name is “none”) to get to the list of the ones available (fig. 3). All the character-level formats you can see under this name are local, meaning they are not controlled by any style.

On the list of char styles, the user can see whether the selected text has some format not included in the style: an “update” button shows up on the right of the name (fig. 4). Here is also possible to create a new style, by tapping on “Edit” and then on the plus sign (fig. 5).

And finally a piece of advice for those with some typographic knowledge or mere eagerness for perfection: real small caps cannot be invoked in Pages on iOS. The “small caps” we see under the char style name are an emulation (see, again, fig. 3), that is, a reduction of capitals by a percentage. The result of this parameter is a set of shabby shrunk caps. We only can overcome this limitation by previously setting a proper small caps style on the Mac.

It may not be well known that two character formats, strikethrough and underline, can be set as character styles and thus be more accessible when setting text. To create one, follow these steps:

• Select a word.
• Go to the menu Format, submenu Fonts, option Show Fonts.
• On the Fonts window, click on the first or the second buttons (Underline and Strikethrough) to the right of the cogwheel.
• On the drop-down, choose Single or Double (see the image below). On the same drop-down, choose a colour for the lines. Close the Fonts window.
• With the cursor in the newly formatted word, click on the Format button.
• Open the Character Styles drop-down and click the plus sign.
• Give a name to the new character style. Optionally, on the same drop-down, assign a keyboard shortcut to it.

Now you have a better way to give format to text segments such as foreign words, emphatic expressions and relevant terms.

The mere mortal isn’t a photo or video editor, a programmer who needs to run Xcode, a graphic designer, a Logic user…, that is, an advanced user. I’m not. It just happens that I use, mostly simultaneously, InDesign, Word, three or four windows of Preview, Mail, Spark, Numbers and half a dozen to ten Safari tabs and, for starters, plus occasionally EagleFiler, Contacts, PDFpen, Pages, TextSoap, iTunes, Scrivener, Ulysses, Devonthink Personal and a number of tools that sit on the menu bar.

That explains why I’m searching for a computer with 32 GB of RAM. Unfortunately, not a single model of MacBook Pro can be configured with that amount of RAM. As for the 21,5-inch iMacs, I can have that memory only in the highest of three models. The 27-inch models can all sport those 32 GB, but they are all 5K and really expensive.

Why can’t I purchase a retina (maybe 4K) 27-inch iMac with a mid-range graphic card, a basic i7(even an i5) processor and 32 GB of RAM? It’s inscrutable to me.