Making books in Low-Tech & LT:Companions 1 & 3

[Turhan's Bey Company]

Originally Posted by Flyndaran

Degree of fanciness rarely coincides with usefulness.
Haven't we all read pretty calligraphy fonts that slow reading?

That, I strongly suspect, is a question of familiarity rather than fanciness vs. utility. If, say, blackletter and ligatures were inherently difficult to read, I can't imagine that they'd have been used for centuries. Now, modern calligraphic styles may substitute aesthetic effect for utility, but at this point, manuscript traditions are pretty much dead, and those styles are deliberately designed to look good, not to be read. Different bag of cats.

That said, I largely agree that fanciness and utility are orthogonal. A Bible, for example, might gain a bit of utility by larger capitals at the start of each chapter, verse numbers set off to the side, and the words of Christ in a different color of ink, but does it really become easier to read and comprehend if there are jousting muskrats in the capitals and a shiny splash page for every book? I don't think so. Now, they certainly have utility in a social context. Fancier stuff impresses people (and GURPS has rules for that, of course). That's why books like that were produced. But as an improved information resource? I'm not seeing it.