Is default line width appropriate for Palatino 11 pt?

[landroni]

The docs are emphatic:

The size of the text body is intentionally shaped like it is. It supports both legibility and allows a reasonable amount of in- formation to be on a page. And, no: the lines are not too short.

Same message in the FAQ:

The classicthesis style uses such a good text width for 10pt Palatino.

While I appreciate the philosophical approach and in my view (probably not shared by my employer) the line width for Palatino 10 pt is good, I'm not so sure about Palatino 11 pt.

Both in the TeX and the LyX templates the documents default to fontsize=11pt. However when I use this in my real documents, I get quite a number of words that are not properly hyphenated (i.e. "hanging"). In short, I'd have to resort to numerous manual tweaks to make sure that nothing is hanging out there. When I switch to fontsize=10pt, however, I almost get no such issues.

Since the class seems to default to Palatino 11 pt, I'm wondering if the calculations for line width are indeed working as intended?

[Ivo Pletikosić]

I don't think classicthesis.sty makes any choice of the font size, if you use it with doumentclass{article} the font size is 10, with KOMA-script it's 11 by default. And this is the default page size from classicthesis.sty for Palatino:

 \areaset[current]{336pt}{750pt}

In the comment below André has

% Palatino  10pt: 288--312pt | 609--657pt
% Palatino  11pt: 312--336pt | 657--705pt
% Palatino  12pt: 360--384pt | 768pt

so this is already on the upper limit for a 11pt font. (resulting in 68-70 character lines) It is true that there are in some cases too many protruding lines, most often with typewriter fonts in the line, and this issue should be addressed, by, for example, increasing the penalty. Finally, local/manual

hy\-phen\-ation

always helps. As does changing the abovementioned areaset in classicthesis-config.tex if one's not happy with the default width.

[landroni]

I don't think classicthesis.sty makes any choice of the font size

This is indeed so when looking at the bare class. But since all template examples ship with one of the Koma flavors (scrreprt, scrartcl or scrbook) and default to 11pt, I suspect that for most users of the class this font size will indeed be the recommended default. (Personally looking at the example defaults, I had assumed that classicthesis was designed to work only with Koma. Of course it turns out I'm wrong, but you see how it's easy to get confused if you're less than an TeX expert...)

And this is the default page size from classicthesis.sty for Palatino:

\areaset[current]{336pt}{750pt}

Does the default page size remain fixed whether the user opts for 10pt, 11pt or 12pt sizes? This would mean that for 12pt the line width would result in even worse problems than I encountered with 11pt... Could/should this be made conditional in classicthesis.sty, e.g. different default page sizes for different font choices? If {336pt}{750pt} is default for 10pt, this is well above the 312pt | 657pt suggested for this font size, but works well enough. Maybe a similar approach should be taken for 11pt, i.e. use max of 12pt-suggested paper sizes for 11pt documents...

It is true that there are in some cases too many protruding lines, most often with typewriter fonts in the line, and this issue should be addressed, by, for example, increasing the penalty. Finally, local/manual hy\-phen\-ation always helps. As does changing the abovementioned areaset in classicthesis-config.tex

I agree. In my case though, with a simple 15p document set at 11pt, there were simply too many instances for comfort (with serif fonts), which is why I was wondering if the defaults were appropriately tuned. Given the chosen defaults in the templates shipped, I would suggest that all these workarounds should be documented in the manual. This is especially true for novice users who wouldn't know where to look for when running into width trouble, since the docs are pretty authoritative that default line width is fine and shouldn't be tampered with...

[Ivo Pletikosić]

I'd say that 12pt Palatino font with classicthesis is a problem by itself, just as line spacing of 1.5 or 2 would be. There's freedom, of course, for everyone to change things, but then they should know what they're doing. There's a playground area at the very end of classicthesis-config.tex, it shouldn't be too hard to check what works best for a specific case, but it's hard to expect that one can make things work for all. Now, why you're getting so many hyphenated words... I don't know. Have you tried using \sloppy?

[André Miede]

The main problem is that we have to stick with standard standard paper sizes such as DIN A4 or letter, which do not work too well from a typographic point of view. But who can afford custom paper sizes of books such as Bringhurst's? (Not to mention people like your employer ;-)

The frame classicthesis provides is just a rough base that should work rather well for many cases, but which many people also might want to customize. Combining font size and text size is on my ToDo list, but there are many different requirements (thesis, book, etc.) that cannot be anticipated. Many people also change the font which also changes the game.

Concerning your hyphenation problems, more information would be helpful. You could also try a different font such as Libertine (taking less space).

[landroni]

The frame classicthesis provides is just a rough base that should work rather well for many cases, but which many people also might want to customize.

Yes, I realize the constraints and that it's tough to come up with solutions that would work all the time for all possible scenarios. I guess by now my proposal is to simply devote a small section of the docs specifically to this issue: font size, page size, hyphenation issues and possible workarounds. I suspect a mere summary of this ticket would serve just well.

You could also try a different font such as Libertine (taking less space).

But the class is so much prettier with Palatino! :)

[André Miede]

Inserted a reference to this issue into the wiki: https://bitbucket.org/amiede/classicthesis/wiki/ChangeTextSize