Re: lynx-dev Spacing cleanups and nits

[David Combs]

> From address@hidden Wed Dec  9 19:41:30 1998
> Date: Wed, 9 Dec 1998 19:38:11 -0800 (PST)
> From: Doug Kaufman <address@hidden>
> 
> On Sat, 5 Dec 1998, brian j. pardy wrote:
> 
> > On Sat, Dec 05, 1998, Webmaster Jim wrote:
> > > On Sat, Dec 05, 1998 at 01:38:23AM -0800, brian j. pardy wrote:
> > > > Finding myself overcome by insomnia, I decided to sit down and do
> > > > something I had been meaning to for a while, and fix some of my spacing
> > > > errors -- I never remember to put two spaces after the end of a 
> > > > sentence.
> > ... 
> > > FWIW, the "par" program that I use to format email into ~72 column text
> > > puts one space a period.
> > 
> > My *brain* puts one space after each period, and it's proving to be a 
> > really difficult habit to break. 
> 
> There is really no reason except for aesthetics to put two spaces
> after a period. When you consider that documentation will be changing
> in the future and that programs can not generally tell which "." is
> the end of a sentence (where you may want 2 spaces), which is a "." in
> a filename (no spaces wanted), and which is an abbreviation (one space
> wanted), I think it would be best to use one space uniformly or leave
> the spacing variable (what harm, really ?).
>                                Doug
> 

The reason to place TWO spaces after a sentence-ending-char (period,
bang, question-mark, etc) is that many EDITORS -- emacs for sure, maybe
also vi, not sure there) use that as a way of knowing WHERE a sentence
ENDS, so their commands "go fwd one sentence" can work.

Likewise, SOME text-formatters and typesetting systems ALSO rely on
the same rule.  The one I use, "Scribe" (originally from CMU) works
like that, and I bet LATEX does too.

Also, two spaces is EASIER TO READ, when your eyes are scanning
fast, in the source-text, eg when fixing or adding to the doc.

Without the two-space rule, how is a program to tell whether, say,
a period is part of an abbreviation, "Lets go to D.C. today.",
or the end of the sentence?  Seems like the EASIEST and SIMPLEST
way to inform a program of what we intend.

Just my two bits.  Am sure no one will agree.  Oh, well...

David