World Class Typesetting

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• Wedding
• Graceful
• Memoir
• Together Forever
• New Arrival
• Historic Landscape
• Simple
• Stone
• Classic

"Pastor Jackson was overwhelmed at the beauty of the book's cover. He has told me since, that the layout was just perfect; and the quality of the book was more than he imagined. "

Sincerely thanks,
Pastor Theron Stewart
Kaufman, Tx.

Wedding

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Typesetting

Typesetting is an art. Back before computers, millions of pieces of "movable type" (single letters of the alphabet) were placed together by hand to create a beautiful book. This was called "typesetting". We consider Gutenberg's movable type the single greatest invention in world history.

Today, the art of typesetting has gone digital. Three powerful typesetting systems are responsible for almost every modern book, magazine, catalog, and newspaper you have ever seen or read: TeX, Quark Xpress ($749.00 software package), and Adobe InDesign ($699.00 software package). Hiring a professional typesetter to run these systems for you would only set you back $1,000 to $2,000 per book.

MemoryPress delivers the power of TeX to your family library without all the cost, making it simple for you to create a book that even Gutenberg could be proud of.

History of TeX

We found the following history of TeX very educating. You will better understand why MemoryPress is the solution to building your family library not like simple word processors and cheap book making systems.

In 1969, Donald Knuth, at Stanford University, published his first book. Knuth's publisher produced a beautifully typeset book using the classical process, called mono-type, a century old technology for laying out the text in books.

Years later, in 1977, he completed the manuscript for a new volume of his book. This time Knuth decided to try out the new computerized typesetting systems. He received the galley proofs (previews of what his book would look like) and compared them to the classical book he had previously published. The galley proofs were awful. After a futile search for a computerized typesetting solution, Knuth decided to take a year off his work to create the needed solution.

He got hooked and he started on a 12 year journey creating TeX, one of the world's most stable and advanced typesetting systems.

TeX vs Microsoft Word

Example 1 - Common Ligatures

TeX (correct use of ligatures) Microsoft Word (common ligature errors)

A good typesetting program should always use contextual intelligence to determine whether ligatures are needed. Common ligatures are essential to professionally typeset text.

Example 2 - Real Small Caps

TeX (real small caps) Microsoft Word (fake small caps)

Professional fonts contain different sets of glyphs for small capitals and full-sized capitals so that the small caps look the same as the small letters in their line widths. Notice how thin the lines look at Microsoft Word's small caps "A" when placed next to the small "a." Now look at the TeX small caps "A" next to the small "a." This subtle difference provides the right balance between small caps and the other text that makes a book feel more professional.

Example 3 - Real World Example

TeX (professionally typeset) Microsoft Word (many errors)

When typesetting just one small example of words in Alice in Wonderland, note three major differences between professional typesetting, powered by TeX, and Microsoft Word. First, look carefully how TeX uses contentual intelligence to determine that a ligature is needed to combine the "f" and "i" in the word "finishing." Second, TeX avoids placing "So" on its own line, making the sentence easier to read. Finally, TeX also produces a more balanced text block by extending the last sentence out on the final line, instead of leaving "been" hanging. Professional books are built upon this attention to balance and detail. If MS Word makes this many mistakes in a simple 86 word excerpt of Alice and Wonderland, how many mistakes are there going to be in a whole book?

Because of these and many other advanced typesetting features, TeX is used as a standard for publishing the most demanding mathematical textbooks at most of the world's academic presses (including books published by Addison-Wesley Cambridge University Press, and Oxford University Press

Since the release of TeX, other world class standards like Adobe InDesign ($699.00)have adopted TeX state of the art algorithms for creating beautifully typeset books.

TeX isn't a dinky word processor; it typesets books on a professional grade.

Although TeX has typeset millions of professional books over the years, the TeX program was too complex for most people* until now.

TeX is the typesetting engine behind MemoryPress and will produce a finer typeset result than other book making systems. Why would you trust your family history with anything less than world class typesetting? MemoryPress makes you an expert typesetter without making you learn TeX. Even better, you don't have to purchase and learn $699 to $749.00 software applications.

* This article refers to LaTeX, a macro programming language that simplifies typesetting in TeX (at least for a programmer). Most people even think LaTeX is very difficult to learn.

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