Re: Request for English debconf template review

[Steve Langasek <vorlon@debian.org>]

On Tue, Sep 04, 2007 at 07:16:24AM +0200, Christian Perrier wrote:
> > Sorry, I consider single-spacing of sentences a loss of information about
> > the structure of the text.  If you want debconf to condense double-spacing
> > of sentences to single-spacing for display that's fine with me, but asking
> > me to single space my sentences in the source string falls into the category
> > of "things Debian doesn't have the authority to ask a native speaker to
> > standardize unless they agree with my standard." :-)

> I'm not exactly sure about getting the point in "loss of information
> about the structure".

> Do you actually *always* double-space sentences or do you use
> double-space only in some situations? 

Always a double space after the end of a sentence.

> If you always double-space, that actually means you use this trick to
> respect a typography standard (IIRC, a space after a sentence dot
> should be 1.5em). So, just a trick which doesn't fit all other
> language's way to deal with sentence spacing in computer texts (while
> all languages have roughly the same typography conventions for
> sentence spacings).

Yes.  In debconf frontends that use variable width fonts (such as the GNOME
frontend), it's altogether possible for a double space to be rendered at
1.5em.  However, it would not be correct to automatically render whitespace
following any period as 1.5em, so without double-spacing in the source
string it's not possible for a renderer to determine which periods are
end-of-sentence punctuation and which are not.

> If you sometimes single-space, sometimes double-space, it means you
> give different meaning to both these spaces and I would be convinced
> more easily..:-)

Sure, it's double-spacing after punctuation marking the end of a sentence,
and single-spacing after other periods (such as for an abbreviation, incl.
titles).

-- 
Steve Langasek                   Give me a lever long enough and a Free OS
Debian Developer                   to set it on, and I can move the world.
vorlon@debian.org                                   http://www.debian.org/