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%%%  author          = "David Rhead",
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%%%  title           = "Some ideas for improving {\LaTeX}\\ General",
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%%%  abstract        = "Ideas and suggestions from David Rhead for
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\chapter{Some e-mail comments on standard styles}

\begin{footnotesize}\begin{verbatim}
From:     David Rhead ...
Date:     3 Mar 91 17:58:49

At Cork, I think that Frank mentioned the idea of both:
1.  supplying style files that emulate the effect of the present LaTeX 2.09
    "standard styles" (for backwards compatibility)
2.  supplying new "standard style" files.  I think he mentioned having
    analogues of the current article, report and book, plus having
    a "conference proceedings" style.
This note is about (2).

In general, I'd suggest that (2) be done in line with traditional mainstream
publishing practice.  [This seemed to be what Phil Taylor was after when,
at Cork, he described the adjustments he'd had to make to get a LaTeX-ed
book that didn't scream "I've been produced by (La)TeX!", and could be
published.  It would be nice if people in his position didn't have to make so
many adjustments.]  This leaves the problem of determining what mainstream
practice is.  Here are some comments about page-sizes and typefaces.


                           JOURNAL ARTICLES

As regards journal articles, the book by Page, Campbell & Meadows may be
helpful [1, pp. 35-6].  The gist of it seems to be that, for reasons
connected with the sizes of printing presses, journals tend to ignore
B5 and A4 (or did when [1] was written) and go for page sizes of:
*  244 mm x 172 mm, with a 2-column layout.  This is slightly smaller
   than B5 (because B5 doesn't make optimum use of the presses).
   Page et al. seem to be talking in terms of typesize of "9 on 10.5"
   for such a design (although strictly speaking this was for a B5 example.)
   Perhaps this is what the analogue of \documentstyle[9pt,twocolumn]{article}
   should be designed for.
*  276 mm x 219 mm (demi quarto), with a 2-column layout.  This is slighly
   smaller than A4.  Page et al. seem to be talking in terms of typesize of
   "10 on 11.5" for such a design.
   Perhaps this is what the analogue of \documentstyle[10pt,twocolumn]{article}
   should be designed for.

Page et al. also give two B5 (250 mm x 176 mm) examples:
*  single-column, type-area 197 mm x 130 mm, 10 on 11.5
   Perhaps the analogue of \documentstyle[10pt]{article} should
   implement something like this.
*  double-column, type-area 206 mm x 133 mm, 9 on 10.5
These may be more to illustrate economics of different designs than
to say that people actually use B5 much, though.  They say that
single column with 10pt is usually preferred for maths & physics.

If some of the "new standard style" files implemented designs aimed
at the above sizes of paper (with crop marks to show the corners of
the target area), they might serve as a good starting point for anyone who
has to produce a style file for a real journal, particularly if the rest
of the design was based on "the average design" of some real journals
Such styles might also keep authors happy who want to see what their paper
might look like in a real journal.


                                  BOOKS

As regards books, Hugh Williamson suggests that the A series haven't caught
on for book work (not in 1983 Britain, anyway) [2, ch. 3].  He lists the
British Standard cut-page sizes, including (in millimetres):
                              quarto            octavo
crown                        246 x 189        186 x 123
large crown                  258 x 201        198 x 129
demy                         276 x 219        216 x 138
royal                        312 x 237        234 x 156
Apparently 181 x 111 and 178 x 111 are used for paperbacks.
He also lists the corresponding American stock sheet sizes, which give
cut-page sizes of:
      140 x 216
      156 x 235

      127 x 187
      137 x 203
      140 x 210
      143 x 213
which agrees with the Chicago Manual of Style [3, p. 623].

Obviously there is a great variety of sizes.  Presumably any new "standard
book styles" would have to be designed for a particular size of paper.  I'd
suggest that they be designed for a cut-sheet size that IS actually used for
books (e.g. one or more of the above) and that crop-marks be produced to
show the "target area".  Ruari McLean [4, p. 130] says that demi octavo is
one of the most "normal" sizes for books, so perhaps 216 x 138 (or the
nearest US size, 216 x 140) should be one of the "target areas".

As regards section headings -
Williamson [2, p. 163] mentions the scheme:
      level A (i.e., \section) in roman capitals;
      level B in small capitals;
      level C in upper/lower case italic,
      level D in upper/lower case italic, followed by a point, run-in
            with text.
"The Chicago Manual of Style" [3, p. 570] mentions:
      level A caps & small caps (or full caps)
      level B in small capitals
      level C in italics, upper/lower case, followed by a point,
            run in with text.
There seems a fair amount of consensus between these gurus.  Perhaps
elements of these schemes could be combined to give a mainstream design
that isn't going to upset anyone.


                        A4 (and US equivalent)

We have the contradition that:
*  LaTeX is a typeSETTING system.  For most books and journals,
   the typesetting tradition uses paper that is smaller than A4, and
   uses fonts of around 10pt.
*  most LaTeX output comes, at least in the first instance, on A4 (or
   US equivalent) paper from a laserprinter, where A4 etc. is an "office"
   paper size that fits in with the typeWRITING tradition (which usually
   involves fonts of arout 12pt).
So the naive user, seeing something from a "book" \documentstyle on A4
in 10pt, starts to ask "Why doesn't it use all the paper?".  Crop
marks, to indicate the page-size for which the design is intended,
might help:
*  such people to understand why the design doesn't fill A4
*  avoid such people getting an a4.sty out of an archive and going
   \documentstyle[a4]{...} (to get text height/width that purports
   to be "for A4 paper") and then wondering why they've got something
   that is difficult to read
*  help anyone who wants to produce a book to visualise the effect
   that was intended by the designer.

Although it may not be clear which, of the large variety of cut-page
sizes in common use, should provide the target "cut-page sizes" for the
"new standard style's" article and book designs (and their variants),
it does seem fairly clear that:
*  the target "cut-page sizes" should generally be smaller than the A4 sheet
   on which output will initially appear
*  the users should be made aware that the target area is different from A4,
   so they don't ruin the design in their attempts to "make it fit A4".

Obviously, if a design is intended for A4 (as it might be for a
draft article, a report or a thesis), the crop marks would be omitted.
Users would then know that they can use the output just as it comes out
of their laserprinter.


                              GENERAL

I'd be inclined to make Times Roman the normal font for running text
in any "new standard styles" (with a switch somewhere to substitute
Computer Modern for anyone who doesn't have Times Roman, or wants
to get "nearly ready for publication" before they switch from
preview-able Computer Modern to less-easily-previewed Times Roman).
I have the impression that Times Roman is "the default font" for running
text in mainstream publishing.  This would cut out one change that publishers
often seem (rightly or wrongly) to ask people to make who are trying to
typeset a book themselves.  [I have nothing against Computer Modern.
I'm just inclined to "bow to the inevitable".]

I'd be inclined to refrain from providing style-files in situations
where they are unrealistic.  For example, if it is very rare for
real journals and books to use a 12 point typeface for running text,
it may not be worth the effort of supporting \documentstyle[12pt]{article}
and \documentstyle[12pt]{book}.  To support such things may involve
asking the question "What design would one have for a 12pt journal?", to
which the real answer may be "One wouldn't actually have a 12pt journal."

As an alternative to "making the cut-page size depend on the font-size"
(which seems the consequence of the 2.09 way of doing things), it might
be worth considering "making the font-size depend on the target page-size".
E.g. rather than having the user go
      \documentstyle[11pt,twocolumn]{article}
and (having measured distance between the crop-marks) deducing the
size of paper for which the design is intended, it might make more
sense for the user to go
      \documentstyle[...b5]{article}
and get a one-column 10 on 11.5 design intended for B5 paper, or
      \documentstyle[...b5,twocolumn]{article}
and get a two-column 9 on 10.5 design for B5, or
      \documentstyle[...demisemioctavo]{article}
to get an error message along the lines "Sorry.  No single-column
design is available for the demisemioctavo paper-size."  Designs could
then be limited to combinations of paper-size and layout that a real
journal might conceivably use.


                            REFERENCES

[1]   Gillian Page, Robert Campbell & Jack Meadows.
      "Journal publishing: principles and practice", Butterworths, 1987.
      ISBN 0-408-10716-2.

[2]   Hugh Williamson.  "Methods of Book Design", Yale University Press,
      1983. ISBN 0-300-03035-5.

[3]   "The Chicago Manual of Style", Chicago University Press, 1982.
      ISBN 0-226-10390-0.

[4]   Ruari McLean, "The Thames and Hudson Manual of Typography",
      Thames and Hudson, 1980.  ISBN 0-500-68022-1.
\end{verbatim}\end{footnotesize}
\begin{center} --- \end{center}
\begin{footnotesize}\begin{verbatim}
From:     Sebastian Rahtz <S.P.Q.Rahtz@UK.AC.SOTON.ECS>
Date:     Mon, 4 Mar 91 11:11:40 gmt
... writes:
 > My feeling on the standard document styles (and this is the way
 > that I teach this in my LaTeX classes) is that they DEFINE the
 > structures that appear in a document type, but only give an
 > EXAMPLE of the appearance of those structures as printed. My
yes, fine. a good approach. but it is not very efficient if the
examples are not directly useable. you are talking about people
writing new style files, but 99.9% of the punters have no clue even
where the style files *are* let alone what to do to amend them.

I applaud David Rhead's notes. Lamport states clearly that he
consulted document designers when he created the examples styles;
history seems to show that not many people agree with his style
designers, so lets at least try again and make LaTeX acceptable to a
few more people. Would anyone like to claim that LaTeX's defaults are
acceptable to any publisher they have dealt with? I'd suggest that the
defaults are quite suitable for computer science technical reports;
does not LaTeX aspire to be a professional tool?

 > Rather than trying to do something like say, let's make article
 > look as much like some "standard" appearance for articles (good
 > luck), let's create good structure definitions in our styles,
the two are not opposed

I was interested by David's reflection that
 [12pt]{article}
was contradictory. I suggest that the reason it exists is that people
use `article' for 90% of their daily work (like quick reports on what they
are up to, or class notes) *not* for journal articles. its a misnomer,
IMHO. I have never yet produced a document for use outside this
building that did not require a style different from `article' - are
there *any* journals which would accept it? This is no reflection, of
course, on LL's work! I just think the style designers he talked to
are unrepresentative of the profession.

These discussions often concentrate on headings, by the way. Lets not
forget lists. Maybe David can tell us the ISO standard for vertical
space between items in an enumerated list

PS what puts me off going away and playing with these ideas in sample
styles is a slight fear that the style interface will be very
different from what I have now. After hearing Frank talk about the
concept of an environment stack driven by rules, I have been lying
awake at night trying to decide what I think. If that *is* the model
to adopt, then it affects a lot of the ways one thinks about style
files.
\end{verbatim}\end{footnotesize}
\begin{center} --- \end{center}
\begin{footnotesize}\begin{verbatim}
From:     David Rhead ...
Date:     4 Mar 91 15:43:11

Sebastian asks whether I can find an ISO standard for vertical space
between items in an enumerated list.

I doubt whether there is such an ISO standard (although we don't have the
standards here for me to browse through).  My impression is that ISO might
pronounce on document-structure and on things like SGML, but that
they are unlikely to pronounce on details of typographic design and
"house style".  I haven't been able to find any particular views expressed
about lists in books on typographic design, either (except for Jan White -
see below).

We do have British Standards for browsing.  Those for theses, manuals
and reports (4821, 4884 and 4811) don't express any views on lists
(although they do seem to generally like arabic numbering).

Jan White devotes pages 88-92 of "Graphic Design for the Electronic Age"
to lists.  As a non-guru, I wouldn't lay lists out like Jan White
(not in a book that has non-indented paragraphs, anyway), since it
leaves the reader unclear about where paragraphs end.  In documents
that have non-indented paragraphs, I wouldn't put extra space between
list items (because I'd want the reader to be able to distinguish
between "list within paragraph" and "list at end of paragraph", and hence
to be able to distinguish one paragraph from the next).  But then Jan White
is a guru and I'm not.

Martin Bryan devotes pages 328-333 of "SGML: an author's guide" to how a
particular "sample DTD" treats lists, but this doesn't answer Sebastian's
query either.  (This particular DTD allows the author to over-ride
"house style" by specifying the numbering sequence to be used.  I was
surprised to see such emphasis given to a feature that over-rides
"house style", since I thought that SGML was intended to help deliver
documents that conform to a "house style".)
\end{verbatim}\end{footnotesize}
\begin{center} --- \end{center}
\begin{footnotesize}\begin{verbatim}
Date:     Mon, 4 Mar 91 16:29:09 CET
Comments: Originally-From: Don Hosek <DHOSEK@HMCVAX.CLAREMONT.EDU>

My feeling on the standard document styles (and this is the way
that I teach this in my LaTeX classes) is that they DEFINE the
structures that appear in a document type, but only give an
EXAMPLE of the appearance of those structures as printed. My
approach to style design is to, after some preliminaries, input
the base style (report/letter/book/article) which defines the
category of documents that I'm working in.

Rather than trying to do something like say, let's make article
look as much like some "standard" appearance for articles (good
luck), let's create good structure definitions in our styles,
make it easy to adjust the styles with the outline I gave above,
and provide multiple versions of how those classes of documents
could appear.
\end{verbatim}\end{footnotesize}
\begin{center} --- \end{center}
\begin{footnotesize}\begin{verbatim}
From:     N.POPPELIER@NL.ELSEVIER
Date:     Tue, 5 Mar 91 12:45:21 +0000

I'd like to reply to David Rhead's recent contributions to this list.


1. His summary of page sizes and typefaces for book and journal publishing
is of course interesting in its own right, but its relevance with respect to
the discussion going on this list is not high -- this is not meant as a
personal criticism!

Getting the sizes and typefaces right for a document style for scientific
books or journals always turns out to be the easiest part, in my experience.

LaTeX needs more tools for designing page layouts, font sets -- the new font
selection scheme is already a major improvement -- and section headings, but
summaries of page sizes or section heading schemes are a bit beside the point
here.

A few details:

1.1. As for the use of typeface sizes >10pt: production of camera ready copy
on a larger page frame, using \normalsize = 12pt, followed by photographic
reduction, is normal practice here. `What design would one have for a 12pt
journal?' is not the right question.

1.2. Times Roman can never be the normal font as long as the only font _all_
TeX sites have is Computer Modern. Far more important: the new font selection
scheme combined with the virtual-font mechanism enables you to make a
document-style option for _any_ font you like.

1.3. As for Sebastian's comment: there is nothing wrong with using `article',
especially with \baselinestretch > 1.0 and in combination with the 11pt or
12pt option, for producing a preprint of a research paper. In our, i.e.
Elsevier's, case the printed version produced by the author is excellent for
conventional copy-editing. For compuscripts, it doesn't even matter what the
author uses to print his article, since we put in a new document style during
the production stage. Only in a very limited number of cases do we accept the
printed version for actual production of the book or journal.
So `are there *any* journals which would accept it?' is the wrong question,
at least in Elsevier's case.


2. The paper on reference lists concentrates too much on layout and not
enough on structure. For a, in my humble opinion, much more valuable
discussion of LaTeX 3.0, reference lists and BibTeX I'd like to refer to the
talk Frank Mittelbach gave at the Cork conference last year.

As for `standards in academic publishing': there aren't any! At one of the
first meetings of the Dutch TeX Users Group there was a discussion about this
and a staff member of Kluwer Scientific Publishers argued that every
publisher has his own standards. It's the same here at ESP:  every publishing
unit within our company has its own standards, and even though there is
something like an `ESP house style', there is also plenty of variation.

I'm totally opposed to the idea of having different coding schemes for
different systems of citation. In my opinion, this goes completely against
the basic idea behind LaTeX and SGML, namely separation of form and contents.
Consider the amount of re-coding when switching from the number system to the
name-year system!

To David's review I'd like to add that \bibitem's have no sub-division, at
least not one that is indicated by explicit control sequences (`tags').
Instead, the tagging of \bibitem's is done _outside_ LaTeX, which has always
struck me as odd.
\end{verbatim}\end{footnotesize}
\begin{center} --- \end{center}
\begin{footnotesize}\begin{verbatim}
From:     MITTELBACH FRANK <PZF5HZ@EARN.RUIPC1E>
Date:     Thu, 7 Mar 91 12:17:48 CET

Here is an answer from Leslie to Davids mail about sizes
and a few comments of my own.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

   he'd had to make to get a LaTeX-ed book that didn't scream "I've been
   produced by (La)TeX!", and could be published.

LaTeX output screams "I've been produced by LaTeX" because it has been
produced with the same standard document style that every other LaTeX
user uses.  As long as there are standard styles, that's going to be
the case.  And that's fine with me.

   journals tend to ignore B5 and A4

When there is a standard journal, there will be a standard journal
style.  Until then, journals who want to typeset using LaTeX will
have to design their own styles.

As long as the printers used by 99.99997% of LaTeX users use either
8-1/2" X 11" or A4 paper, the standard LaTeX styles will be designed to
be printed on that paper.

Similarly, until there is a standard-sized book, the standard LaTeX
"book" style will be for 8-1/2" X 11" or A4 paper, so they can be used
while writing the book.  (This may come as a surprise to some of the
younger members of the TeX community raised during the television age,
but books actually have to be written--a process that takes orders of
magnitude longer than typesetting.) Thus, "book" describes the logical
structures that are handled, not the size and shape of the typeset
output.

Leslie Lamport

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

I agree with David insofar as the standard styles do not conform
to general practice at least in europe.
But the aim of the standard styles is to provide a layout that
is displaying the contents in a logical way, down to six levels
of sectional units etc.
Or say it in another way, the LaTeX styles will work with any kind
of document that use their tags. This is often not true for
special styles.

We certainly have to try making standard styles that will be usable
by many sites without much adjustments, I agree that at the moment
nearly every user (to my experience in Germany) fiddles around with
the settings because the standard University style is sooooo much
different, but we should keep styles that support documents they
the current styles do.

Adding better support for the two main paper sizes namly Laserprinter
A4 or American size is certainly necessary, and should be part of the
document style since it usually effects quite a few parameter.
The current situation in Europe is not satisfactory with 10 different
A4 styles that all have different problems.
\end{verbatim}\end{footnotesize}
\begin{center} --- \end{center}
\begin{footnotesize}\begin{verbatim}
From:     "Nelson H.F. Beebe" <beebe@edu.utah.math>
Date:     Mon, 4 Mar 91 12:47:55 MST

...

we should make sure to avoid using style file names longer than 8
characters (PC DOS strikes again).  Even though most TeX
implementations on the PC simply drop the extra characters, and find
the right file, when users employ the truncated name and then port
their files back to other systems, they discover that LaTeX cannot
find their style files, and may have to resort to a TeXpert for help.
...
\end{verbatim}\end{footnotesize}
\begin{center} --- \end{center}
\begin{footnotesize}\begin{verbatim}
From:     David Rhead ...
Date:     3 Apr 91 11:57:22

You may remember my entry about "standard styles" on March 3rd.
Here are a few comments about the subsequent comments.

I started on March 3rd by recalling that Frank had mentioned (at Cork) the
idea of having both:
1.  style files that emulate the effect of the 2.09 standard styles,
    book, article, report, etc.
2.  some additional style files, analogous to, but different from,
    the present book, article and report, plus a "conference proceedings"
    style.
[I hope I've remembered Frank's remarks correctly, and that (2) isn't just
a figment of my imagination.]

My suggestions were about (2).  I don't know how definite Frank's plans
are about "having some additional style files".  If no-one has time to do
anything, neither my suggestions nor the subsequent comments matter
much anyway.  But if someone has time to do something about (2), they might
as well try to make the style files practically useful.  This could be
either by having designs that are aimed at a phototypesetter, on which
       "print size" will also be "publication size" (which was the scenario
       I assumed)
or     by having designs that are intended for printing "too big" followed
       by photographic reduction for publication (as mentioned by Nico).
If something is done, please could the corresponding style files have
comments stating the design assumptions, e.g. "This design is intended
for ultimate publication (without reduction) on demi-octavo paper.  If printed
on bigger paper, it produces crop marks to show the demi-octavo target area."
or "This design is intended for ultimate publication on B5 paper.  To achieve
the effect intended by the designer, you must photoreduce the LaTeX-ed
output to 70%" or "This design is only intended for use while you are
writing your book.  Unless you are proficient at writing LaTeX style-files,
you are advised to submit your book to a publisher whose staff can supply
style-files that will re-format the book prior to publication.".
I.e. the assumptions should be made clear, so that people know what they
have to do to get the effect the designer intended with the style-files that
form part of the standard distribution, and can make changes (if necessary
to keep their publisher happy) from a position of understanding the
designer's assumptions/intentions rather than from a position of ignorance.

I'd have thought that Leslie's concern about people who are at the "writing"
stage, and are using standard laserprinter paper, would be catered for by
(1), i.e. the style-files that emulate the 2.09 standard styles.

Frank reports Leslie as saying
      "book" describes the logical structures that are handled
This is obviously true in the sense that LaTeX 2.09's book.sty etc. define the
logical structures that LaTeX 2.09's "book style" handles.  But what if
the logical structures that the 2.09 book.sty etc. handle aren't quite
the logical structures of "a book" as understood by the rest of the publishing
industry?  See, for example, pages 4 and 5 of the "Chicago Manual of Style"
(which has its origins pre-television) and pages 157-161 of Jan White's
post-television "Graphic Design for the Electronic Age".  A move towards the
industry's structures would be "a good thing" (e.g. it would make it easier to
implement design decisions like "within front matter we do this" and "within
back matter we do that").  If questions arise about whether any
   "additional style files, analogous to, ... the present book, etc."
should implement 2.09 structures or "publishing-industry standard" structures,
I'd suggest a move towards the "publishing-industry standard" structures.
\end{verbatim}\end{footnotesize}
\begin{center} --- \end{center}
\begin{footnotesize}\begin{verbatim}
From:     Don Hosek <DHOSEK@EDU.CLAREMONT.HMCVAX>
Date:     Sun, 3 Mar 91 12:23:00 PST

My feeling on the standard document styles (and this is the way
that I teach this in my LaTeX classes) is that they DEFINE the
structures that appear in a document type, but only give an
EXAMPLE of the appearance of those structures as printed. My
approach to style design is to, after some preliminaries, input
the base style (report/letter/book/article) which defines the
category of documents that I'm working in.

Rather than trying to do something like say, let's make article
look as much like some "standard" appearance for articles (good
luck), let's create good structure definitions in our styles,
make it easy to adjust the styles with the outline I gave above,
and provide multiple versions of how those classes of documents
could appear.
\end{verbatim}\end{footnotesize}