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“I just chose words carefully”

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Re: “I just chose words carefully”

#291

Post by pc86 »

RugnirViking wrote: post #280
Xirdus wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Newspapers figured out wide text lines are awful for reading some 100 years ago. We're still waiting for web designers to catch up...

Why are novels laid out the way they are? It's almost as though its not as simple as "bad for reading" but rather a feature of the content. imo it highly depends on the medium. If your content is packed with distracting ads, flashing banners, other unrelated text from other stories, then its helpful to make the columns narrow to help you scan. If you have a more focused experience around one passage of text, wider te…

Are a lot of novels laid out with 24-30" lines of text?

Re: “I just chose words carefully”

#292

Post by Xirdus »

RugnirViking wrote: post #280
Xirdus wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Newspapers figured out wide text lines are awful for reading some 100 years ago. We're still waiting for web designers to catch up...

Why are novels laid out the way they are? It's almost as though its not as simple as "bad for reading" but rather a feature of the content. imo it highly depends on the medium. If your content is packed with distracting ads, flashing banners, other unrelated text from other stories, then its helpful to make the columns narrow to help you scan. If you have a more focused experience around one passage of text, wider te…

Video games are routinely stomping over all known rules of good user interface in the name of art. And that's okay because it's a leisure activity, and efficiency and comfort is not the goal. I suspect the same thing is true of novels - making the text physically easier to read wouldn't make the story emotionally easier to enjoy, so they intentionally choose a suboptimal text layout for aesthetic reasons.

The only two types of books I can think of that are routinely read for purposes other than leisure - dictionaries and the Bible - are usually printed in multi-column layout from what I've seen.

Re: “I just chose words carefully”

#294

Post by rat9988 »

Xirdus wrote: post #279
thavalai wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems to wrap correctly in landscape mode.

Newspapers figured out wide text lines are awful for reading some 100 years ago. We're still waiting for web designers to catch up...

*Hacker news web designers.

Many websites already have a limited text width.

Re: “I just chose words carefully”

#295

Post by hiccuphippo »

nasso_dev wrote: post #287
hiccuphippo wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Code editors should do this visually without adding actual space characters to the file.

why not go even further? store the source minified without any extraneous whitespace and let the editor display a properly indented view in your preferred style...

An AST-based code editor. That would be neat.

Re: “I just chose words carefully”

#296

Post by boomlinde »

card_zero wrote: post #38

This might potentially rejuvenate the writing by disrupting habitual patterns, which forces more original choices.

  Deliberate distractions
  from the functional end
  goal benefit other arts
  just as well, promoting
  lateral thinking. Brian
  Eno made a card deck of
  "oblique strategies" to
  help you out of blocks.
https://enoshop.co.uk/products/oblique-strategies

Re: “I just chose words carefully”

#298

Post by jwilk »

matja wrote: post #219

Obligatory mention, the GNU JUSTIFIED PUBLIC LICENSE: https://tom7.org/bovex/JCOPYING (for the rabbit hole: https://tom7.org/bovex/ )

Hmm…

  To do so, attach the following notices to the program. It is safest 1 to
  attach them to the start of each source file to most effectively 2 state
  the exclusion of warranty 3; and 4 each 5 file 6 should 7 have 8 at 9 10
  least 11 the 12 "copyright 13 line 14 and 15 a 16 pointer 17 to 18 where
  19 the 20 full 21 notice 22 is 23 found 24.
What's up with the numbers?

Re: “I just chose words carefully”

#299

Post by NuclearPM »

RugnirViking wrote: post #280
Xirdus wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Newspapers figured out wide text lines are awful for reading some 100 years ago. We're still waiting for web designers to catch up...

Why are novels laid out the way they are? It's almost as though its not as simple as "bad for reading" but rather a feature of the content. imo it highly depends on the medium. If your content is packed with distracting ads, flashing banners, other unrelated text from other stories, then its helpful to make the columns narrow to help you scan. If you have a more focused experience around one passage of text, wider te…

Starting sentences with “It's almost as though/if” is very annoying.

Re: “I just chose words carefully”

#300

Post by marcianx »

lproven wrote: post #214

4 leading spaces, is that right? Let's see... I used to write all my online posts like this in my early days of having own personal email address. My primary email is from 1991 and I used it, and DOS-based tools, to go online from 1991 until the late 1990s. At 1st I ran DOS tools from a floppy, then on my own PC with OS/2 2, then under Win95, then under NT 4. Gradually all the tools that were current at the time beca…

    The passage has a couple commas where it shouldn't and doesn't have
    some commas where it should just for justification. So it's trading
    one type of particularity for another, and I favor grammar more. :)
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