Joy Beeson said:
Sites overstuffed with tricks the would-be designer has just learned
and will never master are far from new.
Back when self-publishing was done on paper, the editor who had just
switched from ditto or mimeo to photocopy or offset exclaimed "I don't
have to trace line art with a stylus any more! And I have hundreds of
mis-matched borders and a whole book of irrelevant clip art! I'll
never print white space again!"
Later on, the editor who switched from creating copy with a typewriter
or daisy wheel to a laser printer or inkjet got drunk on font choice:
No two headers the same size, no two paragraphs in the same typeface,
important stuff in letters too big to see as words.
I wonder what excesses happened when the hectograph was invented? I
don't quite go back far enough to know. I don't even know whether it
was before or after the typewriter. It *might* be before carbon
paper.
A newsletter that I used to print with twelve sheets of extra-thin
carbon paper now goes out to an unlimited number of people by e-mail.
We have just finished one incredible century.
Joy Beeson
--
joy beeson at comcast dot net
http://roughsewing.home.comcast.net/ -- sewing
http://n3f.home.comcast.net/ -- Writers' Exchange
The above message is a Usenet post.
I don't recall having given anyone permission to use it on a Web site.
Ummm... HTML (and other content) delivered through web browsers does NOT
equate to print, no matter how you cut and paste it.
Having said that, the web, together with other self-publishing tools like
HTML, SGML, Word etc... have done much to de-mystify the world of the
typesetter and publisher. It's no longer a closed shop, thankfully. The
typesetter/publisher no longer controls content, and nor should (s)he. (Bear
in mind here, that look and feel IS content, however misguided that notion
may be - there IS a message in presentation).
....and finally (if done correctly on the web) typesetting (i.e.
presentation) is now wholely seperated from meaning (the actual text). This
is a "Good Thing". Textual content should stand on it's own, unadorned,
feet, I say, without decoration or embellishment, other than that in the
written word.
(spot the lack of editorial punctuation in the previous paragraph)
I sincerely hope you are not bemoaning the old typeset days. The web in
particular, and the internet in general, have empowered the millions
(perhaps billions) that were enslaved - or at least entrapped - by the
printing press IMHO, just as those pre-Gutenburg thinkers were entrapped by
a lack of media and popular consumption.
Just be aware that in 'empowerment of the masses', comes 'masses of
bulls**t'. There's nothing new in that. Compare Darwin's 'Origin of Species'
with 'Playboy'. The 'net alone is not responsible for the prolifieration of
crap. The crap comes from peoples' minds, not from the media on which it is
presented.
The trick now is to seperate the bulls**t from the useful online. Good luck
with that one.
Welcome to the (late) 20th century / (early) 21st century. Shite content has
become the norm. Filter it, then get used to it, just as we have had to with
print-based media.
(Random thoughts)
