Re: description writing guide

[Steve Greenland <steveg@moregruel.net>]

On 04-Dec-02, 13:01 (CST), David B Harris <david@eelf.ddts.net> wrote: 
> Also, in the description template, two spaces are used after a period -
> is that standard nowadays? 

(Yes, I've read some of the other responses to this.) 

In standard typography, it is to have extra space after a period ending
a sentence. For fixed-width fonts, this often shows up as two spaces,
as is fairly ugly. For variable width fonts, it's often very subtle,
especially as if the text is also justified, which has a strong effect
on spacing.

However, this is all on *output* (display, whatever). The input text
should have just a single space. The text has to be reformatted to fit
the screen (display area) anyway (even on a terminal), and it's the job
of the reformatter/text renderer/whatever to get it "right".

In practice, of course, most of the common text-based package display
programs (aptitude, apt-cache show) will not bother to attempt to figure
out which periods end a sentence, and thus "need" extra spacing. OTOH a
lot of people (IMO) would argue that the fixed-width two-space end of
sentence is sufficiently ugly that we're better off without it.

Steve

-- 
Steve Greenland

    The irony is that Bill Gates claims to be making a stable operating
    system and Linus Torvalds claims to be trying to take over the
    world.       -- seen on the net