Canada has type designers - using fonts by a Canadian designer ( like Nick Shinn ) might be a nice touch.

1. Georgia's oldstyle figures replaced by lining figures in Univers, strange, but presumably following some sort of logic.
2. Faux italics of Univers.
3. Never have liked fake ordinals (e.g. in 1st) either.
4. Needs a double space after the bold italic sans side heads, before main serif text style.

But these are typographic nitpickings, not really important to the layout and hierarchy of the new bilingual layout, which I'm not really qualified to judge, not being familiar with the previous version. I think they want feedback from regular users of these kinds of documents.

Canadian content: Patrick Griffin, John Hudson, Chester Jenkins, Ray Larabie, Rod Macdonald, Thomas Phinney, Jim Rimmer, Les Usherwood.
Should be able to get some Georgia and Univers alternatives out of that bunch.

As someone who reads (English) statutes on a daily basis, I was a bit surprised to read this in the design brief:

"The number of characters on a line of text influences the speed of reading and the ease of comprehension: a line of text that is too short can slow reading and cause eye fatigue as the eye must move more often from one line to the next, whereas a line that is too long may cause the eye to skip to the next line. With respect to long texts, the ideal length of a line is between 50 and 70 characters. In the new page layout, the lines are on average 56 characters in length (versus 42 in the current PDF version)."

My experience is that most people who use statutes do not read them for any length. I rarely read more than one section--perhaps 150 words--in one go, and often single subsections of a few words are all that is required. I'm therefore not sure that design considerations suitable for book typography are the most appropriate in this case. That said, increasing the line length is certainly welcome for most statutes since it reduces the number of orphans when short subsections break over the line.

Having more information in the header and footer of each page is, I expect, a big improvement, since single pages from acts are (in the UK at least) regularly printed and it is helpful to have as much information about where they came from as is possible.

Technically, I wish they would prepare the PDFs so that copying from them is easier. Particularly since this a bi-lingual text, in two columns. Testing it in a few PDF readers, I can't successfully copy two consecutive sections from the same language without pulling in a section from the other; something which would be extremely annoying if I had to use these on a regular basis.

In terms of the type, it doesn't seem to be a very radical change over the old system. I like the bold Univers figures for the section numbers but find them quite distracting in the running text. It is interesting that they have turned the marginal comments into headings for each section. In the UK, these are added editorially by the printers after the Act is approved by Parliament. This affects the weight given to them as aids to interpreting the statute by the Courts since they were not directly approved by the legislature. If the Canadians have the same system, then this could cause confusion since the typography clearly suggests them to be part of the Act.

I wonder if there is a reason why the subsections in English are labeled (a) (b) (c) &c. and those in French a) b) c)?

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Statutes are also my bread and butter: and these are disgusting.

While I can see the point of these bold subsection numbers, everything looks too smashed together. If I had to deal with Canadian legislation I would get very sore eyes very quickly. And the chapter headings do not stand out at all (the face is too narrow) - which is a problem, as I use section headings to catch my eye when I'm flicking through a statute trying to find a correct chapter (and if it's too narrow, I'm not going to see it).

Forgive me, but I am a fan of the Queensland legislation layout. Yes, it's boring. Yes, it's simple. But it works: which is the most important thing for me: http://www.legislation.qld.gov.au/LEGISLTN/CURRENT/A/ApiariesA82.pdf

If you think these look smashed together, you should try reading some American Session Law ( e.g.)! I don't know how they can bare to deal with that on a daily basis.

What I often think is lacking from the electronically published statutes which was present in the older versions is a enough gravitas. I think legislation from a national government should give the appearance of having authority. Many electronically published ones look no different to the constitution of a football club or amateur dramatics society.

Jacob, I was about to say that I'm able to copy from one column in Adobe Reader, but it looks like I was incorrect. I can copy lists, which are multiple paragraphs, but when the highlighting hits a subhead, it jumps over to the other column. That would get frustrating really fast.

The Univers numerals in the text are awful. Especially when they're used for French dates: « 1er juin 2009 ». Univers 1, followed by fake superscript er, normal text juin, Univers 2009. Eek.

They should publish in XML and let people import and format into PDFs any way they see fit.

What I often think is lacking from the electronically published statutes which was present in the older versions is a enough gravitas.

And that is reason enough to warrant professional typography, not mere inputting by a typist with a basic word-processing app.
This quality of execution may be smart and clean, but it is like going to court and the judge is wearing a sports shirt.

Technically, I wish they would prepare the PDFs so that copying from them is easier. Particularly since this a bi-lingual text, in two columns. Testing it in a few PDF readers, I can't successfully copy two consecutive sections from the same language without pulling in a section from the other; something which would be extremely annoying if I had to use these on a regular basis.

xpdf on a linux system has that capability. There's probably a port to MacOS, but I don't know about any other operating system. Probably not an option for many, but I use it for exactly that reason.

st

A someone who teaches Canadian law, I appreciate the effort. I have several other ideas as to how make legislation "more readable and easier to consult", but none involve typography.

On a different note, I was delighted to learn that the Migratory Birds Regulations are "frequently accessed".

Scott: at least on my machine, xpdf doesn't properly handle the soft hyphens and copies the text literally as it appears (which reminds me that it was one reason I switched to evince on Linux). The only reader I can find which allows column selection in a vaguely sensible way is Foxit Reader on Windows. I'm surprised that the PDF specification doesn't specify a proper way of handling columns or, if it does, that it is not implemented by the readers.

Nick: I think the difficulty with these documents is the volume that are produced each day. Looking at the UK's Legislation Site, there were 60 pieces of legislation published yesterday (albeit all Statutory Instruments rather than Statutes), some of which can run to several hundred pages. If they are also attempting to published up-to-date legislation showing consolidated amendments, then I think some automatic generation is going to be inevitable, since the costs of getting everything professional set might be prohibitive. That's not to say the templates should not be properly designed and implemented, nor that official printed versions should not be properly set, but I think there is a limited to what can be done for the consolidated versions. In the old days, when going to the higher courts in the UK, one was required to have the pleadings printed (e.g.) but that seems to have died a death in the name of efficiency and so it's not surprising that the statutes are going that way too.

…some automatic generation is going to be inevitable…

That doesn't preclude professionally polished typography.
The amateurish features of the new design which I pointed out in my initial post are all things that can be fixed globally, and do not require fixing at the level of manual adjustment.

In fact, if Georgia's old style figures are unacceptable (though why that should be escapes me), then surely it makes sense to switch to a typeface that has default lining figures, rather than change fonts every time figures appear in the text?!

And there is simply no excuse, in 2011, for faux italics in a professional document.

...fixed globally, and do not require fixing at the level of manual adjustment.

Ah, I think we agree; having a proper, professionally designed templating system is what I also had in mind. I thought you were advocating having everything manually set, as in the old days!

Unfortunately, a template which is professionally designed may have typography which is lacking in polish, because the quality of typography amongst professional designers varies considerably.