
The Secret Law of Page Harmony - bavidar
http://retinart.net/graphic-design/secret-law-of-page-harmony/
======
zrail
The first section of the manual for the LaTeX Memoir class used to be an
extended essay on book design and not at all LaTeX specific. I'm not entirely
sure why the author removed it, but here's a link[1][large PDF] to a version
with the section intact. If you're looking for more extended look at the
concepts in the OP, check it out.

[1]:
[http://wwwcdf.pd.infn.it/localdoc/memman.pdf](http://wwwcdf.pd.infn.it/localdoc/memman.pdf)

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SeoxyS
When I learnt about this in design school, I went ahead and created a quick
and dirty web app that'd construct the canon for me, instead of having to draw
a bunch of geometry on paper. Here are the links to [1] the app, [2] the blog
post, and [3] the source code.

[1]: [http://vandegraaf.azuretalon.com/](http://vandegraaf.azuretalon.com/)
[2]: [http://kswizz.com/post/3024765786/van-de-
graaf](http://kswizz.com/post/3024765786/van-de-graaf) [3]:
[https://github.com/kballenegger/Van-De-Graaf-
Generator](https://github.com/kballenegger/Van-De-Graaf-Generator)

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keypusher
I like how it comes out when there is writing in the margins or the in the
magazine example, but for a pure textblock it just seems to be a huge amount
of wasted space at the bottom of the page and even on the sides.

~~~
advisedwang
People often have a similar complaint when first seeing how LaTeX lays out a
page. The truth is that both the white space and limited text expanse make the
text much more readable.

After all, paper (and PDF) is cheap. It is better to maximise readability than
paper-cost-per-word.

~~~
galaxyLogic
I agree that white space is important. But why have so much of it on the OUTER
edges of the page, rather than in the inner margins. When you read a book the
paper on the inner margins is typically curved, and thus the "effective white
space" you see there is less than you could conclude from these flat
illustrations.

I can see one reason which could have historic reasons. When you flip the
pages with your hands, they will wear out more on the outer horizontal
margins. If you make that margin wider there is less chance of corrupting the
printed content. However that would not apply to online pages.

~~~
galaxyLogic
Also I don't understand why there should be more white space at the bottom
than the top? Is it because people like to write notes on the page after they
have read it, so writing them at the bottom of the page would seem more
natural?

~~~
tjohns
My guess is that it's because people are much more likely to hold a book by
the bottom than by the top. Either because you want to avoid wear (as
mentioned above) or because you don't want your reader's hand to be obscuring
the text.

(Both of which also explain why the outer margins are larger than the inner
margins.)

------
drderidder
Shameless plug - one of the reference articles was my blog piece on Canons of
Layout. [http://51elliot.blogspot.com/2009/12/canons-of-
layout.html](http://51elliot.blogspot.com/2009/12/canons-of-layout.html)

Grid systems have really helped the layout issue since then, although none of
the ones in current use seem to be based on the golden mean.

~~~
aufreak3
I like how your page reflows for different widths and full screen reading.
Nice work!

edit: Sorry I think I'd accidentally clicked through to another page which did
what I said above
-[http://roundedbygravity.com/colophon/](http://roundedbygravity.com/colophon/)

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err4nt
This is surreal! I'm a designer and I had a brainwave yesterday ”I wonder if I
could apply classical page layout I learned for print design to web“ and my
web history from yesterday included this very page!

I tried to implement some of this in CSS, but here are the issues I had with
it:

\- there aren't left and right pages on web, so margins should be equal.
Classical page layout means that the left margin, right margin, and the gap
between the two pages is equal.

\- there's no comfortable way to control line length in a fluid responsive
layout, unless you have really obvious breakpoints.

\- because long documents aren't broken into pages, the bottom part of the
page runs off the bottom of the screen so there's not even a concept of page
length on web

I still have more thinking to do, and so far I think the site that has done
this best so far is medium.com

------
ckluis
Might have to implement in CSS to see what it could look like for a simple
grid system.

~~~
kevin
[http://roundedbygravity.com/colophon/](http://roundedbygravity.com/colophon/)

~~~
lists
That's almost how twitter's web UI is setup

