presets of Writer

[Julia Heitz <he...@web.de>]

Dear Open Office Team, 
I hope you're doing amazing! I’m a huge fan and avid user of your software.
Currently I am working on my bachelor paper which discusses sustainability in typography. 

The reason I am contacting you is following: 
I am particularly interested in the typographical presets of Writer. This subject-matter will be a part of my bachelor paper. I’d appreciate if you could spare 5 minutes of your schedule to give me a couple of answers. 

Why is Times New Roman set as the default font and why as point 12? 
Why are the line spacings available in predefined steps (1, 1.5, 2.0) and not in point sizes? 
And why are the borders defined they way they are? 
Have the standard settings changed in recent versions of Writer? 

I would deeply appreciate an answer. This will be very beneficial to achieving my bachelor degree. 
Thanks for your support! 

Cheers & all the best,
Julia from Germany
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Re: presets of Writer

[Regina Henschel <rb...@t-online.de>]

Hi Julia,

I have put you in CC, because your mail has been moderated. If you do 
not want to subscribe to the list, you need to follow the discussion in 
a mail archive, otherwise you will likely miss some answers.

Julia Heitz schrieb:
> Dear Open Office Team,
> I hope you're doing amazing! I’m a huge fan and avid user of your software.
> Currently I am working on my bachelor paper which discusses sustainability in typography.
>
> The reason I am contacting you is following:
> I am particularly interested in the typographical presets of Writer.
This subject-matter will be a part of my bachelor paper. I’d appreciate
if you could spare 5 minutes of your schedule to give me a couple of
answers.

> Why is Times New Roman set as the default font and why as point 12?

Choosing this font and size has to be seen historically. "Times New 
Roman" and "Arial" were the default fonts on Windows and in MS-Word. 
Therefore the default document template for western languages was set to 
these, "Arial" for headings and "Times New Roman" for the rest. I don't 
know and cannot look up, which fonts are used on Linux, Mac, OS/2 or 
Solaris, and which fonts are used for non western languages.

Up to now nobody has seen a need to change it. Corporate identity will 
be achieved by own default document templates anyway and interested 
private users will set their favorite font in Tools > Options or in 
their personal document templates.

> Why are the line spacings available in predefined steps (1, 1.5, 2.0) and not in point sizes?

Why should they be in point? The values 1, 1.5 and 2 are well known from 
typewriters. The average user will be unable to cope with typographical 
settings, and these settings known from typewriters work in most cases.

Advanced users and designers of corporate document templates do not need 
a specially unit to set the correct leading. The possible settings in 
AOO go far beyond this simple values. Do you know the dialog?

> And why are the borders defined they way they are?

Because of compatibility to Word 98? I don't know.

> Have the standard settings changed in recent versions of Writer?

The default font settings have to consider, that the font or at least a 
compatible replacement font is available on the user machine. That is 
the case for "Times New Roman" and "Arial". Using another font as 
default makes only sense, when AOO would bundle this font. In that case 
the font would need to be under Apache License.

You will find some discussions and changes in LibreOffice. Please look 
there directly.

>
> I would deeply appreciate an answer. This will be very beneficial to achieving my bachelor degree.
> Thanks for your support!

Kind regards
Regina


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