Although Gutenberg had a major impact on printing in the 15th century, there are traces in Asia of xylogprahy[1] as early as the 6th century. It is argued that western educations give the guy too much credit. His contribution to the craft was more about crafting inks allowing the printing on both side of the sheet. Earlier than that – and closer to the practice that is printing characters in a monospaced grid – there has been stoichedon[2], a style of stone engraving where letters are aligned vertically and horizontally. Words seem to be separated by a spaceless sign between them. I assume this absence of spaces produced the most uniform and pleasing grayness. To my knowledge, we have to wait for the year 2000 for someone called rs1n to produce a perfectly justified monospaced document[3] without adding or removing between-word space, writing and typesetting at the same time.
How does *roff monospace justification algorithm relate to its sibling justifying proportional letters ? Are the two vaguely related or it's another approach ? Martin [1] Printed copy of the Vajracchedikaprajnaparamitasutra, 868 https://idp.bl.uk/collection/51FDAEAFB4A24E2E9981692A98130BC8/ [2] Stoichedon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stoichedon [3] Super Metroid – FAQ/Speed Guide, rs1n, 2000 https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/snes/588741-super-metroid/faqs/10114 mirrored here https://www.martinlemaire.fr/metroid.html Le Fri, May 02, 2025 at 12:42:30PM -0500, Dave Kemper a écrit : > On Fri, May 2, 2025 at 8:07 AM Martin Lemaire <cont...@martinlemaire.fr> > wrote: > > Off-topic to Alejandro's initial question but related to the subject of > > justifying text set in monospace, do we owe this typographic gesture to > > the early *roff formaters or was it already a thing in previous > > publication tool, either software or hardware ? > > Branden addressed the conceptual basis for such adjustment. The > origin of the specific algorithm used for monospace fonts was revealed > by its inventor in a post a few years ago: > > http://lists.gnu.org/r/groff/2018-06/msg00044.html > > Other than starting with a different adjustment "direction," this > algorithm remains unchanged in groff today. >
