Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Paper sizes

royvanrijn.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 206 posts

Re: Paper sizes

#61

Post by murbard2 »

talideon wrote: post #54
raldi wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Instead of blaming others for being dumb, you might want to take the following brief blog post to heart: http://blog.codinghorror.com/but-you-did-not-persuade-me/

No, in this case, he was being dumb. He started out with a complete non sequitur, and then got fixated on that. Clarification: the guy was being dumb, but I was dumb for engaging with him in the first place. I'm in no way 'blaming' somebody for being dumb.

2^4 x 21 mm x 29.7 mm ~ 1 m^2

Yup, he was being dumb.

Re: Paper sizes

#62

Post by theOnliest »

willvarfar wrote: post #39
mrottenkolber wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No its not. In fact its completely unrelated because when making book you should care for aspects like font size and text body layout which follow an ergonomic perspective. E.g. the same booklet layout on a3 wouldn't work at all because the font would be huge. Keep the font size small and you have really long lines...

I regularly print out A4 documents two-to-a-page side-by-side on my office printer. It saves paper, its easier to carry around, and it works just fine. No distortion. If your docs are US Letter, how well do they print out scaled down two-to-a-page side-by-side?

I do this a lot for printing out (research) articles, and the answer is that the text gets shrunk much more, and the margins increased to account for the difference. (This actually turns out to be useful in practice, since there's much more whitespace to take notes in.)

Re: Paper sizes

#63

Post by glitch »

mxfh wrote: post #58
glitch wrote: post #9

I really wish we'd switch to the ISO-216 sizes. A4 to A3 is so much more enjoyable and painless than Letter to Tabloid. This kind of thing came up often while making posters for campus because it was cheaper to NOT print out all of the posters on Tabloid. Rather, using a mix of Tabloid (for the important poster posting spots) and Letter (for unimportant spots and as flyers for handout). Always ended up having to spen…

Is there are reason that B5 sized paper sheets are only available as imports from Japan in Europe? The strict interpretation of the B series as a packaging format for the A series only seems somewhat archaic.

Lack of demand in the States for ISO 216 sizes in general makes it so that relatively/comparatively few stock such paper in the U.S. When wanting to print to the edges (full bleed), publishers will often print on B sized paper sheets with crop marks for A size (and then crop the paper to A size) or similarly print on A and crop to B.

Re: Paper sizes

#65

Post by talideon »

teach wrote: post #60
talideon wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, in this case, he was being dumb. He started out with a complete non sequitur, and then got fixated on that. Clarification: the guy was being dumb, but I was dumb for engaging with him in the first place. I'm in no way 'blaming' somebody for being dumb.

raldi didn't say that anyone was or wasn't being dumb. He said that "instead of BLAMING OTHERS for [x], YOU might want to [y]". Blaming others is a poor lifestyle adaptation. Whether or not the other guy was actually dumb or not isn't relevant.

Who was blaming anybody?

Re: Paper sizes

#67

Post by talideon »

smcl wrote: post #46
talideon wrote: post #22

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.

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/

Oh, I agree. I was as dumb as him for participating in it. If I'd any sense, I'd never have engaged with him after it became clear that he was fixated on something completely separate from the actual point.

Re: Paper sizes

#68

Post by sswezey »

ajuc wrote: post #59
nakedrobot2 wrote: post #8

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

English is far from being streamlined. In fact it's the only language I know that requires you to learn how to pronounce EACH word. Most languages only require learning how each letter sounds, and maybe a few dozen di/trigraphs, the rest is regular. Not so in English.

You have to learn to pronounce each word with Chinese too.

Re: Paper sizes

#69

Post by Symbiote »

mxfh wrote: post #58
glitch wrote: post #9

I really wish we'd switch to the ISO-216 sizes. A4 to A3 is so much more enjoyable and painless than Letter to Tabloid. This kind of thing came up often while making posters for campus because it was cheaper to NOT print out all of the posters on Tabloid. Rather, using a mix of Tabloid (for the important poster posting spots) and Letter (for unimportant spots and as flyers for handout). Always ended up having to spen…

Is there are reason that B5 sized paper sheets are only available as imports from Japan in Europe? The strict interpretation of the B series as a packaging format for the A series only seems somewhat archaic.

B5 paper sheets don't seem to be easily available in the UK.

B5 books are the most common size though, most of my school exercise books were B5 or B4 — that allowed me to glue in a sheet of A-sized paper, possibly folded in half.

Why do you prefer B5 to A4 for paper?

Re: Paper sizes

#70

Post by glitch »

Symbiote wrote: post #69
mxfh wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there are reason that B5 sized paper sheets are only available as imports from Japan in Europe? The strict interpretation of the B series as a packaging format for the A series only seems somewhat archaic.

B5 paper sheets don't seem to be easily available in the UK. B5 books are the most common size though, most of my school exercise books were B5 or B4 — that allowed me to glue in a sheet of A-sized paper, possibly folded in half. Why do you prefer B5 to A4 for paper?

To answer your question about my preference... For non-fiction books, A4 pages seem too big for me, A5 pages seem little too small to me, and B5 pages seem just right. Again, this is just for non-fiction books. Fiction books I prefer more A5-sized. Just my own personal, subjective preference. That's all.
Post reply on HN