UKTeX Digest Friday, 21 Aug 1992 Volume 92 : Issue 32
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Today's Topics:
{Q&A}:
Doublespacing in LaTeX
Re: Doublespacing in LaTeX
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Date: Mon, 17 Aug 92 16:49:28 +0000
From: Owen Boyle <owen@uk.ac.loughborough.mansun>
Subject: Doublespacing in LaTeX
Hi,
Some months ago, Mark Gallagher, a Ph.D. student from Hull, wrote in
complaining about being constrained to produce his thesis in
double-spacing - an anathema to LaTeX.
I recall reading a subsequent note in which a very competent riposte
to the advocates of doublespacing was published. For the life of me,
I cannot find this note despite having saved all Digests since.
I am beginning to think I must have dreamt about it.
Has anybody got a copy of this reply ? The original note (from MG)
appeared in issue #22 titled "Thesis Submission".
Best Regards,
Owen Boyle,
LUT
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 18 Aug 92 09:48:29 +0000
From: David Osborne <cczdao@uk.ac.nottingham.ccc.mips>
Subject: Re: Doublespacing in LaTeX
In a message of 17 Aug 92 17:42:03 GMT, Owen Boyle said:
> Some months ago, Mark Gallagher, a Ph.D. student from Hull, wrote in complai
> ning about being constrained to produce his thesis in double-spacing - an an
> athema to LaTeX.
>
> I recall reading a subsequent note in which a very competent riposte to the
> advocates of doublespacing was published. For the life of me, I cannot find
> this note despite having saved all Digests since.
>
> I am beginning to think I must have dreamt about it.
You were perhaps thinking of a parallel discussion which took place in
TeXhax Digest, issues V92 #009, #011 and #012. Here are the relevant
articles:
TeXhax Digest Wednesday, 3 Jun 1992 Volume 92 : Issue 009
Date: Mon, 20 Apr 92 15:28:56 +0000
From: David_Rhead@uk.ac.nott.vme
Subject: Regulations for theses
Keywords: theses, regulations
From time to time, I've seen queries in TeXhax along the lines
My university's regulations specify that theses should have
double-spacing or one-and-a-half line-spacing. How can I get LaTeX
to do this?
to which Leslie Lamport would reply along the lines
My advice in all such cases is to get your college to modify its
obsolete requirements, which were developed for typewriters, not
laserprinters.
(For example, there was such an exchange dated 8th June 1988.) I think
Leslie is right, and that universities should modify their regulations.
But we rarely get to hear "what happened next?". Did the enquirer manage
to get his/her institution to change their outdated regulations? What
proportion of institutions have changed their regulations? What proportion
have changes under consideration?
In the UK, there has been some progress:
* the British Standard for theses (BS 4821) now allows standard typesetting
conventions for "typeset" theses. (It takes careful analysis of their
wording to deduce this. But I've had indirect confirmation from
the chair of the BS committee that this was their intention.)
Associated with this is a recommendation that lines should contain
between 60 and 70 characters (including spaces).
* York cites BS 4821, and suggests that people contact the York computing
service for advice about typography.
* I seem to remember hearing that Cranfield requires single-spacing.
* Oxford has a nice phrase about "output ... imitates letterpress, then
the layout may be that of a well-designed book".
* Nottingham regulations say that the combination of standard LateX
line-spacing and line-length is OK for postgraduate theses. We still have
problems with undergraduate reports (since each department makes its own
regulations, so its more difficult to negotiate with them all), but I
anticipate that we'll get "if typesetting, then adopt typesetting
conventions" into most undergraduate regulations within the next year.
* I have the impression that many places adopt a pragmatic attitude
"if it looks alright, it is alright" rather than bothering what the
letter of the regulations actually say.
* On the other hand, I was in e-mail correspondence with someone at
Edinburgh last year who had to make a formal appeal to get his
"standard typesetting line-spacing" thesis accepted. (Otherwise, he'd
have had to re-format with increased spacing, re-print and re-bind.)
I understand that his appeal succeeded, but I don't know whether that
means that other Edinburgh people can now be confident that if their
thesis is done "like a well-designed book", it will get past the
bureaucrats.
Arguments I've found useful are:
* Draw people's attention to experimental results on readability as
shown, for example, on page 179 of Richard Rubinstein's "Digital
Typography" ISBN 0-201-17633-5. The gist of it is that "standard
typesetting conventions give typeset text that is nearly optimal for
continuous reading". Hence one can say "Do you really want to make
your thesis more difficult to read than it would be with standard
typesetting conventions?".
* Quote the Oxford regulations about "well-designed book". (Prestigeous
place, Oxford!)
* In the UK, quote the British Standard.
* To people who say that they want the inter-line space for examiners to
scribble comments, point out that "well-designed books" limit their
line-length so, in practice on A4, examiners will get big side margins
in which to scribble.
* If someone is arguing that "double-spaced is easier to read", and they
have a traditionally typeset book on their desk, ask "do you think
that this book would have been easier to read if its line-spacing had
been drastically increased?"
* If someone is arguing that "double-spaced is easier to read", and you
know that they edit a journal, note that "but you don't have such
line-spacing when your journal is printed".
* Quote books on typography at them.
Would any readers like to share their experiences of what is a successful
strategy for getting their regulations changed (or circumvented), or to
report dismal failures? Are LaTeX style-files such as MITTHESIS.STY,
UCTHESIS.STY and SUTHESIS.STY (which increase the line-spacing "as the
typewriter-oriented regulations require") now heading for obsolescence?
David Rhead
JANET: d.rhead@uk.ac.nottingham.ccc.vme
------------------------------
TeXhax Digest Thursday, 18 Jun 1992 Volume 92 : Issue 011
Date: Wed, 03 Jun 92 15:21:56 -0500
From: JERRY LEICHTER <leichter@com.lrw>
Subject: re: Regulations for theses
Keywords: theses, regulations
David Rhead asks for experiences with typeset theses. Here's one experience
from the US: Yale University accepts the LaTeX standard styles, with the
default settings. There's a bit of a story here, though.
The first dissertation printed this way at Yale was John Ellis's, back in
about 1986 or 1987. Several subsequent theses were set "double spaced",
and when it came time for me to prepare my thesis in 1989, it had become
folk wisdom among those I talked to that "the university requires double
spacing". I decided to ask John how he'd gotten away with it, since everyone
else was apparently running into a bureaucratic brick wall.
It turns out he didn't need to do anything special. He printed up a small
sample as he wished the whole thing to appear and sought out the one person
with final say on thesis formats - a woman who's been doing the job for many
years. She was apparently impressed and very pleased to see such high-qualit
y
output. She didn't raise any objections to the non-double-spacing; in fact,
she just wished all theses could look as good as John's.
About a year later, Josh Benaloh used a modified form of John's style and got
a single-spaced thesis accepted.
Following in John's tracks, I also brought a sample along to the appropriate
office. Since "everyone knew" that double spacing was required, I also
brought one with a linestretch of about 1.2 - the least I could use that
might still fool someone into thinking the text was "double spaced". The
"final authority" who John had talked to wasn't in that day, but other people
in the office saw no problem with my "single-spaced" sample. I left it with
them for final vetting by the "authority"; it was granted with no questions a
couple of days later. The actual style I used was a minor variation of
article. Most of the variation was stylistic - e.g., I used bold san serif
for heads. I also modified the text width and height to match the published
university requirements. These modifications, which I inherited from Josh's
style, were quite small, and frankly I doubt anyone would have noticed or
cared if I hadn't made them.
So where did the belief that "double spacing is REQUIRED" come from? Who
knows! No one chose to ask - people just parroted what they had heard.
At least one other thesis, Ruben Michel's, used my settings. Another group
at Yale produced an independent "yalethesis" style option. It had a great
many special hacks in it, some of them again alleged to be "university
requirements". For example, they were somehow led to believe that Yale
required the bibliography to appear before the appendices. I put it after
(which seemed much more logical) and no one complained. Again, the power
of "everyone knows that ...". In any case, several theses using this style,
which uses normal linespacing, have been accepted. So you can definitely
count Yale in as a typographically enlightened place.
The moral of the story: Things may not be as bad as you are led to believe.
Don't take rumors and stories and even dog-eared specifications printed up
years ago at face value: Talk to the people who actually make the decisions.
You may find them more reasonable than you expect. It's a BIG help to bring
along a couple of samples to show how the text SHOULD look, and how it would
look if "double spaced". If there are any questions about what might be
acceptable, try and get the official in charge to note on your sample that it
is acceptable, and sign and date it. This should help avoid last-minute
problems.
BTW, there are many ways to play the game hardball. For example, if the
spec says "double spacing", print the double-spaced sample with a baseline
stretch of 2. It will look TERRIBLE. (Typewriter double spacing is really
much closer to a baseline stretch of 1.5.) If it looks as if getting single
spacing is going to be impossible, try and get away with as small a baseline
stretch as you can. If presented in isolation, a baseline stretch of 1.2 can
look pretty "double-spaced", and while hardly ideal it's not as bad as it
might be. You can make it look even better in comparison by preparing a
"single spaced" document with a baseline stretch of, oh, .9 or so. (This is
only SLIGHTLY cheating - single spaced typewriter text is VERY tight, which i
s
why the whole demand for double spacing appeared in the first place. So don'
t
describe it in typographical terms - describe it as "like typewriter single
spacing", which it is.)
And, of course, chose for your sample a page that will really show off what
decent typesetting can do: Sections with nice heads, perhaps a nice graphic
figure, beautiful mathematical formulas if appropriate, and so on. Keep 'em
looking at the positive and they may forget about "the rules".
-- Jerry
------------------------------
Date: Sun, 07 Jun 92 05:19:57 -0600
From: Ralph Johnson <johnson@edu.uiuc.cs>
Subject: Regulations for theses
Keywords: theses, regulations
In the U.S., all theses are given to University Microfilms, a company
that will reconstitute theses on demand and for a fee. Both Cornell
and U. of Illinois claim that this company requires double spacing
to reduce errors during this process. I am not sure that this is true,
but it is an argument that is hard to refute. Are their any U.S.
schools that permit single-spacing?
The common solution is to make two versions of the thesis, one that is
ugly for the university, and one that is formatted correctly for
departmental tech reports, for distribution electronically, etc.
Ralph Johnson -- University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
------------------------------
TeXhax Digest Thursday, 25 Jun 1992 Volume 92 : Issue 012
Date: Mon, 08 Jun 92 17:16:45 -0800
From: mackay@edu.washington.cs
Subject: Typesetting for Theses (TeXhax Digest V92 #009)
Keywords: theses, regulations
To follow up on David Rhead's very useful remarks, I should
like to ask whether any antiquarians within reach of TeXhax
can locate some history of the fight (which must have occurred)
over allowing the grubby mechanical typescript to be submitted
as a final copy of the thesis in the first place. I'll
bet it was fierce, and it is richly comic to have Graduate
School Bureaucrats now standing firmly in the way of a return
to typesetting quality---and they do.
Properly spaced typesetter fonts look terrible when printed
with typewriter linespacing. If that is what your Graduate
School insists on, you might just as well set everything in
Adobe Courier, and have done with it.
Email concerned with UnixTeX distribution software should be sent primarily
to: elisabet@max.u.washington.edu Elizabeth Tachikawa
otherwise to: mackay@cs.washington.edu Pierre A. MacKay
Smail: Northwest Computing Support Center TUG Site Coordinator for
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End of UKTeX Digest [Volume 92 Issue 32]
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