[TYPO3-doc] Small improvements to official documentation template

[Jigal van Hemert]

Hi François,

On 7-9-2010 10:25, François Suter wrote:
> Since call-out boxes are a new concept in our documentation it's hard to
> say yet how intensively they might be used. However I would expect them
> to be used quite often, once we get into the habit. Do you mean that you
> find the current call-out boxes not "conservative" enough? IMO they can
> hardly any more sober...

I didn't mean that the latest proposals are not conservative enough. You 
already explained that you removed a lot of formatting from them. I just 
pointed out that my preference is that if call-outs are used only every 
10-20 pages or so it doesn't hurt to make them look a bit fancy. If they 
are used quite often the fancy look will easily result in a cluttered 
layout.

So, if you expect them to be used quite often a conservative look is 
better IMO.

>> For printed documents serif fonts for body text is easier to read.
>  From where do you get that wisdom? I have the exact opposite opinion I
> must say. So I looked up what the wikipedia had to say [1] and it seems
> that there are no studies that proved anything, one way or the other. So
> I would definitely stick with serif fonts as it is used by nearly all
> publishers.

Indeed scientific studies do not prove that serifs or sans serifs are 
easier to read. Some publications suggest that it may be a psychological 
thing; from the past we're used to serif fonts in printed material so it 
is more familiar to read it.

We are however not dealing with normal texts where our mind can easily 
recognize entire words, but we often have names of properties with 
non-standard capitals (camelCase for example). The difference between a 
lower case 'l', an upper case 'i' and the number '1' is important. In 
'normal' texts a word like 'Illustration' can easily be understood even 
if the first three letters look like vertical lines (common in some sans 
serif fonts).

If we look at a font family such as Verdana, Tahoma, Nina (each a bit 
more compact than the previous one) which have been designed for optimal 
readability, one remarkable thing is that some glyphs have serifs to 
make it easier to distinguish between some glyphs.

Verdana e.a. were meant to be used on low resolution devices where sans 
serif fonts look a bit better than serif fonts (the serifs themselves 
become too thick).

The rest is just personal experience, which may be based on preferences 
(I just love Old Style typefaces, especially Venetian kinds like 
Centaur, Jenson, etc.) and the fact that most books are set in a serif 
typeface.

>> For relatively wide texts (A4 page width is single column) a line height
>> of at least 1.5 times the font size is easier to read. Long lines are
>> also hard to read for people with some form of dyslexia.
> Line spacing could be increased a bit, although I think 1.5 may make the
> documents extremely long.

A line spacing of "1.5" is something different than a line spacing of 
1.5 times the font size.

Thanks for the good work on the documentation!

-- 
Kind regards / met vriendelijke groet,

Jigal van Hemert
skype:jigal.van.hemert
msn: jigal at xs4all.nl
http://twitter.com/jigalvh