Re: (forw) Bug#189487 acknowledged by developer (Re: Bug#189487: lire: Typo in package description)
On Fri, Apr 25, 2003 at 01:05:12PM +0100, Pete Ryland wrote:
> On Fri, Apr 25, 2003 at 06:31:35AM +0200, Christian Perrier wrote:
> > (please keep me CC'ed to answers if possible. I never remember which
> > mail header is supposed to ask for this)
> >
> > [is "double space after dot" correct english typography?]
[...]
> Since early computers used modified typewriters as input devices, this
> practice has been followed to computers too. I, for one, having learnt to
> type with a typewriter, normally follow this practice by habit, and I agree
> with Hamish that these days the correct solution would be for the display
> software to use an em-space or insert the extra space automatically if
> displaying with a monospace font.
In *roff input, it's good style to put a newline after every full stop
that ends a sentence, since troff recognizes this and uses it as a cue
to widen the space after the full stop a little. I think it would be
useful to adopt this as the convention for package descriptions, since
then at least the display software has a chance of doing it correctly
(without misfiring on abbreviations like "e.g." or "etc.").
This practice also frequently makes diffs less noisy when text is
inserted or removed, although that's perhaps less important in package
descriptions.
--
Colin Watson [cjwatson@flatline.org.uk]
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