Bernardo Sulzbach writes: > > On 05/20/2016 09:27 AM, Brett Cannon wrote: > > > > The period is a full-stop punctuation mark, but visually obscure [1]. > > It is small. This does not make it hard to notice, however.
That depends on fonts, and on the ability of the user to write correctly as well. "Syntax should not look like grit on Tim's screen" applies to natural language as well. I read a lot of English-as-a- second-language text, and it really does help to have the extra space, because the period often appears where English grammar suggests it doesn't belong. The extra effort to use the second space helps to emphasize the author's intent, and even subjectively make the period "more visible". But I agree with Guido. No Python contributors write poorly, so the real issues are consistency with past practice (a minor consideration in the case of comments) and tooling (since both Emacs and vim seem to come out of the box believing in this rule, I guess it's widespread enough to care). As for Brett's concern about whether this should be specified at this level, I think tooling again is an answer. Emacs reflows whole paragraphs. That means that text that is off-screen may be changed according to this rule, and that is an annoyance when you only notice it while preparing a patch for submission. I think a detail of style that triggers unwanted (but plausible[1]) behavior in a widely-used tool is worth standardizing. Sometimes, of course, you standardize *despite* the tool, but then at least the tool-users know that a decision has been taken to impose the burden on them, vs. imposing the burden on people who prefer the other style. Footnotes: [1] If the behavior is implausible, fix the tool, of course! _______________________________________________ Python-Dev mailing list Python-Dev@python.org https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-dev Unsubscribe: https://mail.python.org/mailman/options/python-dev/archive%40mail-archive.com
