http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Elements_of_Typographic_Sty...
Here’s a companion site for applying the book to the web: http://webtypography.net/toc/
http://www.slideshare.net/jeff_croft/elegant-web-typography-...
Reading on a backlit screen is well known to tire your eyes very quickly, due to the low resolution and (afaik) because the eyes' Rhodopsin depletes faster while staring into a light source.
I have heard people arguing that we spend half our days in front of a computer-screen anyways, but that is a different kind of usage. During computer use the eye is mostly scanning and rarely reading chunks of text longer than a page at once. Book reading is a different story, as anyone who has tried to do that on a backlit screen can confirm.
Consequently this argument about (Book-)typography misses the point for me. If you want a good reading experience then get an e-ink device or stick with paper. Even the best font can only marginally reduce the inherent problems with staring a backlit screen for extended periods of time...
In any event, I have read numerous books and publications on my led backlit monitor for my laptop and not experienced significant eyestrain. The amount of eyestrain I feel is roughly analogous to reading in similar environments.
Modern display technology has come a long way from the days of CRTs. I think this complaint is weak at best and unfounded at worst.
The problem with all that is that there are a multitudes of factor in play. Contrast, type size, surrounding light, age of the reader, frequency of breaks... A college student reading his textbook on his iPad or Laptop in a well-lit university is different from an insomniac septuagenarian reading "Eat, Pray, Love" in bed, with the light set low to avoid waking hubby.
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/02/12/do-e-readers-cause-...
Personally e-ink is only a small difference off paperback and faster than a hard back. My last LCD was about an hour longer for a book but it had a smaller screen (and the big problem wrt the LCD was a backlight turning off).
Realistically it's things like: how do you turn a page; can you do it with either hand; is it easy to hold. That make more difference.
I'm sure the Parc guys that founded Adobe would beg to
differ.
"Steve did a prepayment on royalties to make sure
we had the resources to stay in business, and Apple
also bought a little less than 20 percent of the
company, which quintupled the value of the original
investors' money. Steve wanted to make sure that we
finish this product, because it was critical for him
to have the LaserWriter"
"Fortunately, there was a young marketing guy at Apple
named John Scull, who aware of what was going on (as
were we) at Aldus up in Seattle, because PageMaker come
out at the same time as the LaserWriter did. He came up
with the idea of getting the three companies—Apple, Aldus
and Adobe—together to put together a marketing campaign called
"desktop publishing".
Via MacStories http://www.macstories.net/ipad/the-ipad-from-a-typographer-p...
...yes, you use qwerty. It's not just the typography. Typing in iPad is stupid, too.
takes a gander at RenderBlockLineLayout.cpp
Never mind then. The number of special cases in there is frightening.