[Dragaera] A Paarfict Storm

[David Dyer-Bennet]

Diana wrote:
>> Manuscripts are not submitted in a proportional font.  The font seen in
>> the mailing list is whatever font ones mail reader is set for --
>> monospaced in my case.
>>
>> Standards may change as it becomes more common for the authors file to
>> actually be used as the basis for typesetting, because of points like
>> the one you make.  I don't know if or how often big publishers are doing
>> that yet, though.
>>     
>
> OK, point for different people using whatever font they choose to read email.
>
> But still...more often than not, the manuscripts I see are in
> (goddamn) Times or something. And what else would the typesetters use,
> if not the files provided by the authors?
>   

The paper manuscripts that contain the typesetting markups.  One of the 
problems of working with the files is that the whole system of editing 
(in various phases), book design, and revision are built entirely around 
a paper manuscript; there's no obvious way, certainly no standard way, 
to do the communication among the half dozen or so people involved in 
these phases with electronic manuscripts -- and then lots of authors are 
eccentric, and aren't working in Microsoft Word.

I think they don't even know for sure what typesetter they're using 
until very late in the process; I believe it involves the current low 
bid fairly often.


> Granted, this is all from the perspective of one involved in the
> editorial-production end of textbook publishing, and has very little
> bearing on what looks to be a most excellent t-shirt. Except that
> unless it's in Courier, it shouldn't have those spaces. :)
>   

I have little knowledge of that part of publishing, except for the 
general impression that it's remarkably unsimilar to fiction publishing.

I don't know how it is in your part of the business, but fiction 
publishers aren't typesetters, printers, or bookbinders; all that is 
farmed out to a large array of independent outfits.

-- 
David Dyer-Bennet, dd-b at dd-b.net; http://dd-b.net/
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Dragaera: http://dragaera.info