DJ Lucas wrote:
I know this makes absolutely no difference in the rendered book, and we
have bigger fish to fry, but I've found, in more than a few places while
comparing trunk and systemd, where we have a single line diff that
replaces one space with two following a period (probably colon or
semicolon as well, though I haven't found any instances of these yet).
Given the content, I cannot pass -w to diff.
I also learned to type on a typewriter, and it took me years not to cringe
at the end of every sentence I had typed since I learned that this has
become bad practice for most published works. I still catch myself adding
two spaces on occasion. Both CMOS and OWL agree that one space is
preferred in modern proportional fonts (as opposed to monospace as in a
typewriter), as well as most publishers. I found it a bit funny that APA
(American Psychological Association) is the outlier (which is apparently
used by a much wider audience outside of the social sciences), which
suggests two spaces for manuscript drafts and one for published works, but
interestingly, ASA (American Sociological Association) says one.
Were these changes the result of some broken automation software, or
somebody my age or older (or somebody who was taught to do this by
somebody my age or older)? ;-)
Most of the editors are over 40. As you say, it doesn't make any
difference in the book. However you will notice that I am using two
spaces after a period in this post. But I am also using a monospace font.
I do not get overly concerned about spacing in the book with a couple of
exceptions:
First, no tab characters. In a file they are evil. If I space something
for readability, I don't want someone else's tab setting to change the
spacing.
Second, spacing in the book's verbatim sections, generally <screen>
sections is important, That includes trailing spaces where a space after
a backslash can invalidate a paste operation.
Spaces in the text of the book and xml comments are irrelevant. Just do
what is natural for you. I'll note that the xml is generally a monospaced
font so you'll see me make two spaces between sentences there.
-- Bruce
--
http://lists.linuxfromscratch.org/listinfo/blfs-dev
FAQ: http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/blfs/faq.html
Unsubscribe: See the above information page
