Bob. You sound as if you want to add gravure-style stippling to gum or carbon prints. If you are lucky enough to have some colour gravure workers whose prints you can look at, they will give you an idea of the graphical potential.
With stippled/halftoned techniques it is easy to get posterisation in the transitions to the brightest highlights and/or deepest shadows - you have to control whether and how the plate transitions to no dots or all dot. Traditional gravure has the advantage over most other dot-based processes that the holes (dots) holding the ink can be made to vary in depth as well as density. All the same, most modern gravures I have seen are more 'graphic' in their treatment of tones than a carbon print. Classic gravure for book production and the like used mask-making and/or retouching to avoid this look. High quality CYMK halftone printing also used masks for highlight and shadow protection, and general contrast control. With a digital step, all of this can be combined in one output film for each colour, but without it, things get complex fast, requiring craftsmanship and artistry, and a knowledge of your particular press, inks, and paper for best results.
The Getty Atlas of Photographic Processes has a section on halftone, which gives a good introduction to the possibilities:
http://www.getty.edu/conservation/pu...ons/atlas.html
Otherwise, the best, most detailed information on halftoning I have found has come from books and research papers published in the 50s and 60s. Best of all was John A. C. Yule's 'Principles of Colour Reproduction':
https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=U_QeAQAAIAAJ
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