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Paper sizes

royvanrijn.com

41–50 of 206 posts

Re: Paper sizes

#41

I have to note that A4 (what goes in a standard printer) is just a shitty format for documents. There is no way to get a proper layout done, you basically need two columns to use a reasonable amount of space with regards to font size and text body layout, which leads to other problems. There is a very good reason you don't see any A4 books. A5 works OK for book layouts but still is too wide actually... A5 booklet pri…

Y'know, you can just make the margins wider.

Re: Paper sizes

#42

I have to note that A4 (what goes in a standard printer) is just a shitty format for documents. There is no way to get a proper layout done, you basically need two columns to use a reasonable amount of space with regards to font size and text body layout, which leads to other problems. There is a very good reason you don't see any A4 books. A5 works OK for book layouts but still is too wide actually... A5 booklet pri…

Although I don't agree with the width statement, I just wanted to note that I personally find the B sizes nicer than the A sizes for non-fiction books. I find A5 pages a tad small for textbooks, but B5 seems just right. (So, effectively "B4 folded", which is usually printed on A3 to begin with, then folded into signatures, bound, and then ultimately cropped.) And since it's all the same proportion, it makes it easy.

Re: Paper sizes

#43

I have to note that A4 (what goes in a standard printer) is just a shitty format for documents. There is no way to get a proper layout done, you basically need two columns to use a reasonable amount of space with regards to font size and text body layout, which leads to other problems. There is a very good reason you don't see any A4 books. A5 works OK for book layouts but still is too wide actually... A5 booklet pri…

This is what the B series is for. It maintains the geometric properties of the A series but has a 1.420 contrast ratio. B5 is what you want for a typical book.

It's also the geometric mean between A4 and A5, which is pretty cool!

Re: Paper sizes

#44
Next step: metric measurement units everywhere. I've been waiting for that for decades. If "dozens" would die as well, even better.

Re: Paper sizes

#45

This is one of those things that seems technically correct (the best kind of correct) but practically ... meh. The benefit exists but is barely enough to get anyone entrenched to actually change. Much like the common usage of the US Customary units, nothing is going to actually change.

Odd how every single country in the world has adopted it, except for the US and Canada. They all changed.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paper_size#The_international_s...

Re: Paper sizes

#46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Haha that thread is great... good old metric system.

It was like talking to a brick wall. A very dumb brick wall that couldn't get it through their head that the units didn't matter, and that what mattered was the ratio.

I feel your pain. The tough part is realising how pointless those "someone is wrong on the internet"[1] discussions are. I get embarrassed looking back at situations like that, and think "why did I even care if this random person didn't get what I was saying about ?"

[1] http://xkcd.com/386/

Re: Paper sizes

#47
post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There is no way to get a proper layout done This is puzzling - how do you explain the abundance of people who seem to have no problem with this whatsoever? Finally: I have seen lots and lots of A4 books, but they're simply not as common. It probably does help to live in Europe in that regard.

Are you a bookmaker? The are the ones with the problems. ;) > I have seen lots and lots of A4 books And they all have suboptimal layouts.

> And they all have suboptimal layouts.

(my emphasis)

My question would be - would you be willing to ascribe that to taste?

Re: Paper sizes

#48

When someone claims uncritically that the ratio of any two integers is √2, I get a little edgy. I'm also having a hard time following this simplification: A / √A = A × A / A = A Huh? This only holds if √A = A = 1. I haven't checked the rest, but this doesn't give me much confidence. Of course, knowing those Europeans, these sizes do probably make tons of sense on paper (see what I did there?), even if this isn't the…

He's written A / √A = A × A / A = A, but what he means is A / √A = √A × √A / √A = √A, which is actually true and is what he uses below

Re: Paper sizes

#49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was like talking to a brick wall. A very dumb brick wall that couldn't get it through their head that the units didn't matter, and that what mattered was the ratio.

The A0 being 1m^2 is important too, if you're ordering paper by area?

The A0 being 1m^2 is important because paper weight is given in gsm - grams per square metre.

Thus when calculating postage weight by counting the number of sheets you can calculate that, for example, the weight of one A4 sheet is 1/16 the gsm of the paper - 1/(2^4).

Re: Paper sizes

#50

Why did Americans simplify and streamline the English Language, but they didn't bother with all of the systems of measurement?

Now you know how hard it is to replace a legacy system. :)

Actually, we're going the wrong way. The last highway sign I saw in metric was on I-95 northbound. They replaced it a couple of years ago (too old - the reflective material was worn out), and the new one only has miles on it.

There's a short highway in Arizona (I-19) that is only signed in kilometers (it runs to the Mexican border), and there are calls to replace them all with distances in miles.

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