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The excellent impnattypo allows TeX users to programmatically implement a small selection of the rules set out in the Lexique des règles typographiques en usage à l'imprimerie nationale. Does a similar such package exist for implementing the a small selection of the guidelines set out masterfully by Bringhurst in the Elements of Typographic Style?

This question inspired by: French typography recommendations

Edit: I regret that I poorly phrased my initial question. Obviously, the very point of Elements is to learn to understand typographic style enough to create the right design to honour one's particular text. I am referring instead to recommendations similar to those implemented by impnattypo, such as paragraph indentation, approaches to abbreviation and hyphenation, ligatures, etc., which are both fairly universal (though exceptions certainly may arise) and relatively straightforward to implement programmatically. Much like the Regles is a great volume, some of which was distilled into a package, I am searching for a package which distills the distillable and generalisable aspects of Elements

ezgranet
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1 Answers1

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Bringhurst sets out some recommendations but I wouldn't class them as rules. His book certainly has a style about it, for example repeat of the chapter title in the foremargin of recto pages, but not on every one where they could be overlaid by a marginal note, or perhaps replaced by a section title.

I think that the memoir class (warning: I developed it) provides the tools/commands to generate a Bringhurst-looking book but the writer will have to do a lot of specific work, maybe on a per-page basis. I think that the same might apply to any LaTeX class or package. From my point of view there was a lot of manual control of the typesetting of Bringhurst's book.

Peter Wilson
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  • Indeed, IIRC, the introduction of the book explicitly says the purpose of the book is teaching you enough that you know how to depart from the "rules" intelligently (as opposed to blindly stabbing). I perhaps should have been more specific in the question, as I was thinking more of the "innocuous" recommendations (punctuation spacing, small caps abbreviations, a specific set of default ligatures (since Bringhurst doesn't think 'Th' is non-discretionary), etc. You're absolutely right that much of the work of good typography axiomatically can't be done programmatically – ezgranet Jun 26 '21 at 04:34
  • The "Tufte-Book" class does a fairly good job of replicating another very distincitve and idiosyncratic book style; some approximation could be done in memoir as you say, although obviously simply copying the Elements tout court misses the entire point of the book (which is learning to explore typography and create the right design to honour your particular text) – ezgranet Jun 26 '21 at 04:35
  • By way of comparison, the Regles in the linked question also set out a lot of "rules" that simply wouldn't be wise or possible to implement programmatically, and the package impnattypo instead wisely sticks to implementing "small" things like paragraph indent, special rules for widows, etc. – ezgranet Jun 26 '21 at 04:37