Re: don't collapse two spaces at the end of a sentence

Actually, this discussion is more than just off-topic, it is
irrelevant.  Due to the fact that the HTML spec requires user agents to
collapse multiple, adjacent whitespace characters, it really doesn't
matter what tidy does.  It could replace every space with 5 spaces, and
(except in <pre> elements) the user agent is going to collapse them to a
single space when the page gets rendered.  Practically nothing tidy
could do can change that.

(And you can see from the above paragraph that I put two spaces after
every sentence too.  Old habits die hard.)

Barney Wol wrote:
> 
>         Personally I always use two spaces at the end of sentences.
> Yes, it does hark back to the days of manual, fixed-pitch
> typewriters, but it is the way I was taught and, more importantly, I
> believe it aids legibility.  With no disrespect to Diane, compare her
> brief message below, to Charlie's.
> 
>         That the HTML specs require multiple white-space characters
> to be rendered as a single space certainly cleans up the resultant
> the layout, especially when there may be extra carriage-returns
> and/or line-feeds in the source, but it does make it more difficult
> for an author to achieve the desired result.  Perhaps we need a more
> common double-width space character?  Meantime, I am disappointed to
> hear that major publications are changing their style to be, IMHO,
> less legible.
> 
>         But this is getting a bit off-topic - sorry!  As Tidy's whole
> purpose in life is to legalise documents, I think that it should
> replace the double spaces.  If you disagree with the spec, then it is
> that which should be changed before Tidy.
> 
>         Just my two penn'th,
> 
>                 Peter
> 
> At 13:28 -0500 11/12/01, Reitzel, Charlie wrote:
> >That is good to know.  Thanks.  It makes a lot of sense in the modern,
> >kerned and variable pitch font world.  The double space thing is really a
> >holdover from fixed-pitch fonts, going back, I'd wager, to the typewriter.
> >
> >-----Original Message-----
> >From: welch@units.ohio-state.edu [mailto:welch@units.ohio-state.edu]
> >Sent: Tuesday, December 11, 2001 12:58 PM
> >To: Reitzel, Charlie
> >Subject: RE: don't collapse two spaces at the end of a sentence
> >
> >FWIW, I started out as a layout editor (Quark) for a journal that adhered
> >strictly to the Chicago Manual of Style. We used a single space after
> >periods. Journals like Time, Newsweek, The New Yorker, and more all now use
> >a single space after periods. I think that this is a standard that is in the
> >process of changing. I believe the MLA Handbook still requires two spaces
> >after periods, but it's been a while since I checked.
> >
> >Diane Welch
> >========================
> >
> >The HTML specs all require that multiple, adjacent whitespace characters be
> >collapsed into a single space character.  HTML developers everywhere quite
> >reasonably depend on this behavior.
> >
> >take it easy,
> >Charlie

Received on Tuesday, 11 December 2001 16:12:13 UTC