COMPUTER PRESENTATION OF DATA IN SCIENCE

COMPUTER PRESENTATION OF DATA IN SCIENCE

a do-it-yourself guide, based on the Apple Macintosh, for authors and illustrators in the Sciences

by

DOIG SIMMONDS and LINDA REYNOLDS

SPRINGER-SCIENCE+BUSINESS MEDIA, B.V.

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

S1mllonds, Doig. Computer presentation of data in science : a DIY guide, based on

the Apple Macintosh, for authors and illustrators in the life sciences 1 by Doig Simmonds and Linda Reynolds.

p. em. Bibliography: p. Ir.cludes index. ISBN 978-90-481-5818-8 ISBN 978-94-015-7844-8 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-94-015-7844-8

1. Scientific illustration--Data processing--Handbooks. manuals, etc. 2. Technical writing--Data processing--Handbooks. manuals, etc. 3. Macintosh (Computerl--Handbooks. manuals, etc. I. Reynolds. Linda. II. Title. Q222.S55 1988 502.2' 1--dc 19

ISBN 978-90-481-5818-8

All Rights Reserved © 1989 by Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht Originally published by Kluwer Academic Publishers in 1989 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1989

88-25191 CIP

No part of the material protected by this copyright notice may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the copyright owner.

Computer Presentation of Data

CONTENTS

Acknowledgements XI

How this book was created. XII

Foreword XIII

1 Introduction 1 Who is this book for? 1 'Publish or perish' 2 Old and new methods 4 Guidelines 4

v

The Apple Macintosh environment 5

2 Choosing your system and software 7 Finding out what's available 7 The computer 8

What is your computer for? 8 Software availability 9 Resident memory 10 Output requirements 10 User-friendliness 10 Instruction manuals 11 Ruggedness 11 Look before you leap 11

An ideal disc-drive configuration 12 Output devices 12

Impact printers 12 Ink-jet printers 13 Laser printers 13 Laser typesetters 13

What to look for in computer software 13 What programs will you need? 13 General points 14 System control 15 Compatibility 15 Memory requirements 15 Write programs 15 Draw programs 16

VI

Paint programs 16 Graph programs 17

Computer Presentation of Data

Page make-up programs 17 Training 18

3 Working methods 21 The systems folder 21 Loss of data 21 Saving your work 21 Organisation 22 Floppy discs 23 Hard discs 23 Folders 23 Hardcopy 24

4 Preparing manuscripts and camera-ready copy 25 New ways of thinking 25 Planning your document 25 Early stages in word processing 26 Word processing for final output 26 Word processing as a prelude to page make-up 27

Layout 27 Importing tabs 27 Body type 27 Printout 27

Illustrations and tables 28 Page make-up 28 Getting the best from laser printers 28

Printer preparation 28 Quality lettering 28 Laser typefaces 29 Typefaces for dot-matrix printers 29

5 Principles of typography and layout 31 Why is design important? 31 What is good design? 31 Function and purpose 32

What kind of document is it? 33 A novel 33 An instruction manual 33 A reference book 34 Areport 34 Who is your document for? 34 How will your document be used? 34

Legibility and readability 35 Legibility 35 Readability 35

Page size 35 Binding methods 36

Loose-leaf methods 36

Computer Presentation of Data

Permanent methods 37 Margins 37

Back-edge margin 38 Top and bottom margins 39 Fore-edge margin 39

The anatomy of type 39 Typefaces 40

VII

Proportional versus monospaced letterforms 40 Type styles 41

Bold type 41 Italics 41 Condensedtype 42 Extended type 42 Underlines 42 Capital letters versus lowercase letters 42

Type and its background 43 Reversed type 43 Tinted backgrounds 43

Sizes of type 43 Mixing typefaces and sizes 45 Inter-letter and inter-word spacing 46 Line length: the 'measure' 47

What is the optimum line length? 47 Line length for distance reading 48

Justified versus unjustified setting 48 Inter-line spacing 49

Linefeed 49 How much space? 50 Subscripts and superscripts 51 Displayed headings 52

Rules 52 The grid - designing pages with their contents in columns 52

Planning your grid 52 Single-column grids 53 Symmetrical two-column grids 53 Asymmetrical two-column grids 53 Three-column grids 55 More complex grids 55 Using more than one grid 56

Paper 56 Summary of major design decisions 56 Exceptions 58

6 Using type and space to show the structure or text 59 Spatial and typographic 'cueing' 59

Spatial cueing 59 Typographic cueing 60

Paragraphs 60

VIII Computer Presentation of Data

Listed points 61 Parallel text or 'pull quotes' 64 Emphasis in text 65

Paragraphs and sentences 65 Individual words 65

Headings 66 Numbering of headings 66 Spatial cueing 66 Typographic cueing 68 Displayed headings 69

Tables 70 Structure 70 Spatial cueing 71 Typographic cueing 73 Titles and captions 73 Page make-up 73 Designing a set of tables 74

Illustrations 74 The bibliography 74 Notes 75 The contents list 76 Theindex 77 Headers, footers and page numbers 79 Preliminary pages 80 Thecover 81 Page make-up 81 What next? 83

7 Artwork creation and drawing tips 85 New ways of thinking 85 How computers draw images 86

Bit-mapping 86 Vector-mapping (object-oriented drawing) 87 Outline-mapping 88

Repeatable image store 89

8 Posters, slides and OHP transparencies 95 Designing for posters 95

Introduction 95 Planning 95 Pre-configured designs 98 Size of originals 98 Text sizes and faces 99

Designing for slides 99 Introduction 99 Legibility 100 How much information per slide? 101 Graphics 102 Photography from the screen 104 Testing your slides 104

Computer Presentation of Data IX

Designing for the overhead projector 104 Introduction 104 Advantages and disadvantages of OHP 104 Text for OHP 105 Graphics for OHP 105 Colour and OHP 106

9 Designing with colour 107 Introduction 107 Creating coloured images 107

Primary methods 107 Secondary methods 108

Definitions 108 Colour on paper 108 Colour on VDU screens 111

Colour generation 111 Legibility 112 Background colour 113

Colour on slides 113 Colour for emphasis 114 Colour coding 115

Colour discrimination 115 Number of colours 116 Uses of colour coding 116

Colour in text and tables 117 Text 117 Tables 118

Colour in diagrams, charts and graphs 118 Bar charts 118 Graphs 119

Glossary 1 121 Terms used in graphic design and printing

Glossary 2 133 Terms used in computing

Appendix 1: Copyfltting 141 How many words are there in the text? 141

Method 1: Calculation by character count 141 Method 2: Calculation by word count 144

How many lines will the text occupy when it is typeset? 145 How many lines will fit into a given column height? 147

Appendix 2: Signatures and imposition 149

Appendix 3: Publishing and the law 153 Copyright 153 Legal deposit in the British Library 155

Deposit law 155 What is 'publication'? 155

X Computer Presentation of Data

Exempt publications 156 Copyright registration 156

International Standard Book Numbers 157 Data Protection Act 157

Appendix 4: Working comfort 159 The work surface 159 Seating 159 Positive versus negative screens 160 Screen filters 160 Lighting 161 Spectacles 161

Further reading 163 British Standards 163 Writing 164 Style manuals 164 Electronic manuscripts 165 Desktop publishing 165 Legibility 166 Typography and layout 166 Tables 167 Graphs, charts and diagrams 167 Overhead projection 168 Copyright 168

Index 169

Computer Presentation of Data XI

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Like its predecessor, 'The Presentation of Data in Science', this book owes a great deal to the medical staff at the Royal Postgraduate Medical School (RPMS) who have used the self-help facilities which were established in the Medical il­lustration Department in 1975. The original hand drawing facilities have now been replaced with Apple Macintosh computers which are available to all staff at the School, 22 hours per day throughout the year. Users' demands for an il­lustration service that would fulfil a multiplicity of needs have accelerated our own learning curves enonnously, and have provided much of the material for this book.

Major thanks must go to Dr Frank Sketch, who provided all the computer know-how necessary for the changes in working methods at RPMS. Dr Sketch is an independent computer consultant who is known for his work in computer graphics. He currently works with CSS systems, specialising in sales and support in higher education. His expertise in both the IBM PC and the Macintosh environment has been a tremendous advantage when designing a flexible inter-related system.

We are greatly indebted to the following for reading the manu­script of this book and for making many helpful comments and suggestions: Dr Frank Sketch, Mrs Louise Perks of RPMS, and Dr Susan Walker of the Department of Typogra­phy and Graphic Communication at the University of Read­ing. The authors take full responsibility for any inconsisten­cies that remain. We should also like to thank Dr C Winearls for some of the data we have used in our examples, and we are particularly grateful to Professor Twyman of Reading Uni­versity for agreeing to write the foreword to this book.

Doig Simmonds Linda Reynolds Spring 1988

XII Computer Presentation of Data

HOW THIS BOOK WAS CREATED

The manuscript was created using an Apple Macintosh com­puter and the following programs:

WriteNowTM for the word processing; PageMakerTM for typesetting and placement of the illustrations; MacDrawTM, MacDraftTM, SuperPaintTM, CricketGraphTM and Illustra­torTM for making the illustrations. Several illustrations are PMT prints of original electronic art which were made by this technique for the sake of better quality.

The camera-ready copy was prepared via a LaserWriter PlusTM, to show that the printer's resolution of 300dpi is sufficient for this kind of publication. The paper used for the hard copy was High Speed Blade, matt art-coated 100gsm. The sheets were printed to finished size without the need for reduction.

We have used only two typefaces: HelveticaTM and Times RomanTM. The main body of text is set in Times RomanTM 11 pt on a 12pt linefeed; the Contents and Index are set in 1 Opt on an 11 pt line feed. Shoulder heads are 1 Opt HelveticaTM on a 10pt linefeed. Main heads are Times RomanTM 18pt on an 18pt linefeed. The chapter titles are Times RomanTM 18pt capitals on an 18pt linefeed and the chapter numbers are Times RomanTM 36pt. Header text is 9pt HelveticaTM.

We, the authors, are entirely responsible for the writing, il­lustration, design and typesetting of this book.

Computer Presentation of Data XIII

FOREWORD

Books about printing written for printers or would-be printers go back over 300 years. The earliest of them were almost exclusively concerned with books; this century, however, there has been more emphasis on other kinds of documents, and particularly their design.

But no shift in document production has been more sudden than the one that has happened most recently. ConSequently, the last five years have witnessed a substantial movement away from books written for professionals to ones whose aim is to help would-be authors produce their own documents. The opportunities for authors to do this have been opened up by the advent of desktop publishing (a term coined as recently as 1984). As most exponents of desktop publishing have come to realise, the term is something of a misnomer because the provision of facilities that allow authors to produce their own material for publishing is not quite the same thing as publish­ing. Nevertheless, it has been useful in focussing attention on author-produced documents, and what might be described as the democratisation of document production.

This book is different from others in the field. Its target audience is the busy scientist engaged in teaching or research who uses computers in the ordinary course of work. The world of scientific publishing is rapidly moving towards the day when journals will expect contributions from authors on disc, or even by direct transfer of data from the author's computer to the output device of an editor via telephone and satellite.

The authors of this book come from different backgrounds. One is a designer/illustrator who has recently been seduced by the delights of the Apple Macintosh and desktop publishing, the other an information scientist with considerable experi­ence in the evaluation of document design. They bring to this

XIV Computer Presentation of Data

volume a rare combination of skills which the reader is unlikely to come across elsewhere.

It is by no means easy to design a complex document so that it is easy to read and use and, at the same time, looks attractive. And anyone who has tried to design their own books will know that this task is even more difficult. When authoring, typographic design and production are combined- as they are in desktop publishing - the problems can be bewildering.

This book explains in an uncomplicated way how documents can be designed and produced using desktop publishing facilities, but it does more than this. It provides a framework for considering a range of issues, both at the level of charac­ters and of the whole artefact. The biggest temptation for the author confronted with desktop publishing is to do things simply because it is possible to do them. This book seeks to curb the worst excesses of the novice author/designer by setting out some guiding principles of infonnation design that have been established over the centuries by trial and error, and in some cases confinned by empirical research.

The authors do not pretend that they have covered all aspects of document design and production; they tell me that they see their book primarily as a life-raft for those who find them­selves in the turbulent waters created by developments in computing. They take the view- and it is one I wholeheart­edly share- that a document should be designed with the reader's needs uppennost in mind and not primarily for ease of production or in order to be novel. The temptations to do both the latter are very great in desktop publishing.

If scientific authors have anything worth saying they will want others to understand what they write. It will certainly be in their interests to read this book and I commend it for its lively presentation of a difficult subject and for its sound practical advice.

Professor Michael Twyman Department of Typography and Graphic Communication University of Reading