Sentence handling in manual pages

[Colin Watson <cjwatson@debian.org>]

I happened to notice this chunk in the diff from 1.14.18 to 1.14.19:

  -Specifies that the package is interested in the named trigger.
  -All triggers in which a package is interested must be listed using
  -this directive in the triggers control file.
  +Specifies that the package is interested in the named trigger. All
  +triggers in which a package is interested must be listed using this
  +directive in the triggers control file.

I thought this might be a good time to point out that, in fact,
end-of-sentence punctuation in manual pages should always fall at the
end of a line. groff produces slightly better output (particularly when
producing PostScript) if you do this.

Here's the Sentences node in 'info groff', which goes into more detail:


     Although it is often debated, some typesetting rules say there
  should be different amounts of space after various punctuation marks.
  For example, the `Chicago typsetting manual' says that a period at the
  end of a sentence should have twice as much space following it as would
  a comma or a period as part of an abbreviation.
  
     `gtroff' does this by flagging certain characters (normally `!',
  `?', and `.') as "end-of-sentence" characters.  When `gtroff'
  encounters one of these characters at the end of a line, it appends a
  normal space followed by a "sentence space" in the formatted output.
  (This justifies one of the conventions mentioned in *Note Input
  Conventions::.)
  
     In addition, the following characters and symbols are treated
  transparently while handling end-of-sentence characters: `"', `'', `)',
  `]', `*', `\[dg]', and `\[rq]'.
  
     See the `cflags' request in *Note Using Symbols::, for more details.
  
     To prevent the insertion of extra space after an end-of-sentence
  character (at the end of a line), append `\&'.


Thanks,

-- 
Colin Watson                                       [cjwatson@debian.org]