Publisher workbook: errors and typos

[Pyanepsion]

This workbook is admirably useful. It does, however, contain some surprising errors and a few typos.

Chapter 2

p.124. The illustrations in core_skills_picture_frames.afpub are not included in the file. Only the preview remains.

p.140. Illustration. The b and d points of the image are not explained.

Chapter 3

There are no files to download!

p. 166. Text: Serif. Bad definition. The serifs are the small extensions that end the ends of characters in some fonts, called serifs (singular; empattement in French), as opposed to sans serif fonts. A diagonal form an angle with its serif called a serif angle, which is characteristic of a font.

p. 166. Illustration Typeface Weight. Bad translation in English ? It is rather the subfamily of the font: Regular, Italic, Bold, Bold italic.

P. 166. Text: weight. Wrong definition. Weight is also called fat and ranges from thin to extra black (i.e. Ultra Black).

p. 167. Text: Tier 2. The rule explained is very specific to English typography.

Elsewhere in the world, for example in French typography

• The citation in the body of the text will be of the same size.
• The citation in epigraphs its justification and body are necessarily much smaller than those of the current text, composition without line spacing, prose in indents, indentation to the right of one or two squares depending on the format.

p. 168. Illustration. The word ‘true’ framed in red is too much. An orphaned line is the first line of a paragraph of at least two lines that has the misfortune of also being at the bottom of a column.

p. 169. Text: Widows and orphans. Wrong definition. A widow line is the last line of a paragraph of at least two lines that is unlucky enough to be at the top of a column. The orphan line is the first line of a paragraph of at least two lines that is unlucky enough to be at the bottom of a column. The widow [it has no future (in the paragraph)] and the orphan [it has no past (in the paragraph)] should be banished.

p.169. Text: details. Elsewhere, for example in French typography, the emphasis will be on hollow lines. A hollow line is a line that does not go to the end of the justification, usually the last line of a paragraph of at least two lines. When the remaining width is less than a cadratin blank, it will need to be reworked. The best method is then to modify the tracking on this line and the preceding ones so as to increase the hollowness of the last line.

p. 171. En dash, and em dash. The typographical rules indicated are specific to English typography only.

[walt.farrell]

18 minutes ago, Pyanepsion said:

Chapter 2

p.124. The illustrations in core_skills_picture_frames.afpub are not included in the file. Only the preview remains.

I don't think they are supposed to be included, as the instructions later for working with that file seem to suggest using images of your own, not specific images from the book. But it would be good to have a comment from Serif on that (assuming I haven't missed one in the book).

 

21 minutes ago, Pyanepsion said:

Chapter 3

There are no files to download!

Why should there be? Chapter 3 doesn't have any instructions for you to do anything; it's just informational.

 

[Pyanepsion]

49 minutes ago, walt.farrell said:

Chapter 2: I don't think they are supposed to be included

The lack of an illustration in the file shows that the preview exists anyway, and discovering it is a good thing. However, I am not sure that the absence of these images is deliberate since nothing is indicated about it in the text. I’d rather think it was a linked external file that redactor forgot to put internally.

49 minutes ago, walt.farrell said:

Chapter 3: it's just informational.

I learned a lot by examining the illustrations with a magnifying glass. It would have been easier to have them on a large screen in Affinity Publisher, not to mention the didactic aspect of examining the files of the different examples.

[typeglyph]

Page 171 and others.

According to the “elements of typographic style” by Robert Bringhurst – considered to be the bible on all things typographic:

 

Pg. 325 Elements of Typographic Style, version 3.1 © 2005, Hartley & Marks.

 

Em:

In linear measure, a distance equal to the type size. Thus an em is 12 pt. [or a 12 pt square] in 12 pt type and 11 pt [or an 11 pt square] in 11 pt type. Also called a mutton

 

En:

Half an em. To avoid misunderstanding when instructions are given orally, typographers often speak of ems as muttons and ens as nuts.

 

Look on page 323 to see the definition of ‘body size’ or type size. 

 

Pages 80 to 83 will give you a more professional look at the use of dashes etc.

At no point in many of the more astute texts on typography do they refer to the dashes as being the height of an upper case glyph. The full body of the metal glyph is used to measure the point size or body size. 

 

The old adage “to err is human, but it takes a computer to really F*** things up” is very true especially in fine typography & font design.

 

Do strongly consider using standard typographic definitions please. Consider also multiple languages use things differently than English (British/Canadian and the USA version is really dfferent — hence the American Dictionary)

[Pyanepsion]

On 7/26/2022 at 8:31 PM, typeglyph said:

According to the “elements of typographic style” by Robert Bringhurst – considered to be the bible on all things typographic:

███ Voici une nouvelle qui va ravir les francophones. La version française de cet ouvrage de référence de 1992 va être disponible en français à compter du 18 novembre 2022. On peut le précommander.

Les Éléments du style typographique, par Robert Bringhurst = 30 €.

[typeglyph]

Pyanepsion, what would be even better than just a translation — a version of Brinhurst that addresses the nuances of multi-language typography.

Back in the day of metal [and wood] sorts, the accents were integrated with the character.  The Angstrom was nestled or cradled by the apex. The diareses was inside the counter of the geometric O or on the side of the A apex not just dangled on top. As an example look at the original designs for Renner’s Futura or Frutiger’s Univers. Yes this brings up the design of the glyphs as another issue, and not part of this forum.  My intention here is to highlight how myopic we’ve become because we can flick a few chicklets and set type. And to demonstrate how this myopic view generated from computer use has led to so many errors not just in the book but on the help pages as well. 

I remain impressed by how far Affinity has gone, and hope they will continue further with longer strides. 

[Pyanepsion]

I am afraid that the French translation of this book does not take into account non-English typographic features.
That said, if a German, so following different typographic rules, a famous German type designer, Hermann Zapf, considers the book to be a reference, it is indeed an additional argument to buy it.