Font size
Vijay
Hi all
Thanks for the great package. I love it. But I am having a little trouble
with font sizes. The default is 10pt, and while it works very well with
Palatino, it seems to be somewhat small with Bembo, and even smaller with
Adobe Garamond, Minion etc. Is there a way to change the size of body text
to 11 (or 12) pt?
I did manage to change size by commenting out the relevant parts of
tufte-book.cls, but I suspect that isn't the most elegant way.
tia
V
Kevin Godby
At the moment, there's no easy way to adjust the font size. What
you'll want to do is copy the lines (starting with the comment "Set
the font sizes and baselines to match Tufte's books" and ending with
the line \addtolength\labelwidth{-\labelsep} into a file called
tufte-common-local.tex. (These are lines 303--352 in my
tufte-common.def file. It may vary slightly depending on which
version you're running.) Then modify the \@setfontsize lines to set
your preferred font size and line-spacing for each of the LaTeX font
sizes. Finally, drop the tufte-common-local.tex file into the same
directory as your other Tufte-LaTeX files (or the directory containing
your document file) and it will be loaded automatically.
Let me know if you run into any problems with this and I'll be happy
to help further.
--Kevin
vijay
Thanks for the reply. I tried your suggestion, but the problem I
faced was that there were too many combinations to change. For
instance, increasing all numbers by x gives something quite
unnatural. Unfortunately, I don't have a good sense for what the
right sizes and proportions ought to be, which means all options look
equally good . . .
Of course, your specifications work very well for Palatino. My
quick solution, which works surprisingly well, was to use the standard
sizes for 11pt LaTeX, with your baselineskip. But I'll play around
with the code for a while. Thanks again.
Vijay
J. R. Mauro
On Aug 31, 2009, at 21:48, vijay <vijay...@googlemail.com> wrote:
>
> Hi Kevin,
>
> Thanks for the reply. I tried your suggestion, but the problem I
> faced was that there were too many combinations to change. For
> instance, increasing all numbers by x gives something quite
> unnatural.
leading, etc. by the same amount.
> Unfortunately, I don't have a good sense for what the
> right sizes and proportions ought to be, which means all options look
> equally good . . .
Thomas S. Dye
I'm an enthusiastic user of the tufte handout class. Most people
think the handouts I produce with it are beautiful.
vijay's question about setting font sizes raises a larger issue about
the design goals of the tufte-latex classes. As I understand it, the
classes are intended to replicate the layout of specific books and
handouts. They are not intended to be general purpose classes useful
for the design of books and handouts. Is this the case?
Or, is the intent to provide classes that facilitate use of concepts
championed by Tufte in the design of new book and handout layouts?
All the best,
Tom
vijay
to be made between how much freedom one gives the user, and how much
you retain the design goals of tufte-latex. Too much freedom and you
quickly lose your identity, (not to mention your goals) and might then
be replicating something like memoir. Too little freedom and there
will be a smaller userbase. Wherein lies the optimum?
I would like to think of Kevin and other maintainers as benevolent
dictators, who gently guide the user through alternatives, showing
some, but not too many.
my tuppence,
Vijay
J.R. Mauro
>
> I agree with Tom about the goals of tufte-latex. There is a tradeoff
> to be made between how much freedom one gives the user, and how much
> you retain the design goals of tufte-latex. Too much freedom and you
> quickly lose your identity, (not to mention your goals) and might then
> be replicating something like memoir. Too little freedom and there
> will be a smaller userbase. Wherein lies the optimum?
essentially a skeleton, a guiding hand that ensures that the author
produces something with visual appeal, but at the same time, gives
some choices. I would think that any styles should adhere to the same
principles. I intend to contribute to tufte-latex soon, and my main
focus will be some customizability.
Hopefully this is in line with what the developers believe.
J.R. Mauro
Documentclass options for 10, 11, and 12pt are not supported. If the
proper type and leading values were chosen for each one, tufte-latex
would support the `\documentclass[12pt]{tufte-book}' elegantly and in
the same manner as vanilla LaTeX. I'll pursue this if it seems
worthwhile to others.
Kevin Godby
On Mon, Aug 31, 2009 at 8:48 PM, vijay<vijay...@googlemail.com> wrote:
>
> Hi Kevin,
>
> Thanks for the reply. I tried your suggestion, but the problem I
> faced was that there were too many combinations to change. For
> instance, increasing all numbers by x gives something quite
> unnatural. Unfortunately, I don't have a good sense for what the
> right sizes and proportions ought to be, which means all options look
> equally good . . .
>
> Of course, your specifications work very well for Palatino. My
> quick solution, which works surprisingly well, was to use the standard
> sizes for 11pt LaTeX, with your baselineskip. But I'll play around
> with the code for a while. Thanks again.
That block of code in the tufte-common.def file is derived directly
from the 10pt code in size10.clo. It's been modified to increase the
line-spacing a bit.
If you want 11pt or 12pt for the normal size font, you might look at
the code in size11.clo or size12.clo and copy that into the
tufte-common-local.tex file instead. That will revert the
line-spacing and font sizes to the LaTeX defaults.
--Kevin
J.R. Mauro
options be welcome?
>
> --Kevin
>
> >
>
Kevin Godby
I'm away from my email for a day and I miss the cool existential thread. Rats!
Here's my take on the Tufte-LaTeX document classes and the general
direction I'm trying to head in:
Initially, we are trying to mimic Tufte's book design. Since it's a
LaTeX document style, and since LaTeX is nothing if not customizable,
everyone's first thoughts are toward customization and how to tweak
the style to their liking. I've pushed back against this for a bit
until we can establish a solid foundation, the baseline being a good
out-of-the-box representation of Tufte's book design (based
specifically on the design of Beautiful Evidence to start).
We've accomplished much of this goal, I think. While there are still
a few base features to be addressed (and bugs to be worked out),
changing a "\documentclass{article}" to
"\documentclass{tufte-handout}" should get you most of the way toward
a Tuftian-style article.
That being done, we can turn our thoughts toward customization.
To address Tom and Vijay's points:
I think the scope of the Tufte-LaTeX classes are much closer to the
"just like Tufte's books" end of the spectrum than the "is a
meta-class for designing books (like memoir)" end. The TL classes
should promote and exemplify Tufte's principles alongside the
principles of good typography and document design. While the TL
classes default to a particular design and style, we try not to
actively prevent anyone from changing it. If someone really wants to
use \subsubsections, there is a facility for adding that capability in
your local installation. (I won't prevent anyone from creating a
badly designed document, but if making a nicely designed document is
the easier path, I'm okay with that.)
When we look at adding more options, we must do so carefully. Adding
an option provides flexibility, but also requires more documentation
and introduces addition code that must be tested and maintained (and
must be tested in conjunction with the other options). For example,
there are many interactions between the twoside, symmetric, and
marginal justification options (and their negative counterparts).
When a change or addition is made down the road, it's easy to forget
to test the change against all of the possible option combinations --
I know, I do it all the time!
I'm enjoying the discussion and certainly hope that I don't have the
last word in it!
--Kevin
Kevin Godby
> Would a patch that incorporates this behavior into the documentclass
> options be welcome?
Possibly. I haven't really thought about it much yet.
Is providing 10pt, 11pt, and 12pt class options the best method to
adjust the font sizes? It's always seemed a bit limiting to me. What
if I want 14pt or 8pt? Is there a general mechanism that we could use
to make the handling of font sizes better (and then we could just
alias the 10pt, 11pt, and 12pt class options to use the general
mechanism)?
Under what conditions does one normally want to change the document's font size?
Providing the class options would give us more notional compatibility
with the LaTeX base classes, but what impact does it have on the TL
classes?
Currently, the font sizes and line spacing in the TL classes are based
on those used in Tufte's Beautiful Evidence. (Well, as much as is
possible when comparing Palatino to Bembo -- they're rather
dissimilar.)
--Kevin
Thomas S. Dye
> Under what conditions does one normally want to change the
> document's font size?
Aloha Kevin,
In my experience, a big consideration is the size and shape of the
page and text area.
All the best,
Tom
J.R. Mauro
get that work properly. However, I imagine getting a general formula
might not work, though. In particular, there seems to be no mention of
a strict formula in The Elements of Typographic Style.
Assuming no function can be found, one approach would be to define
something like the classic LaTeX \large, \Large, \Huge, etc., so we
might have 10pt, 11pt, 12pt, 14pt, etc. options which set the leading
and other spacing. I think this is the best balance between supporting
everything and keeping things simple and elegant. The Elements of
Typographic Style recommends two offset Fibonacci sequences for
choosing which font sizes to support. Perhaps we could pick a range of
the common double sequence (which includes 8, 10, and 12) and support
a few of those, while letting the user subvert them by hand?
>
> All the best,
> Tom
>
>
> >
>