On 22/08/08 13:34, John Beckett wrote: > Ben Schmidt wrote: >>> "Justify" means to insert variable-width spacing throughOUt >>> the entire line so the left and right margins are aligned. >>> That's how most books and newspaper articles appear. >> And 'right justify' sometimes means this too, as it seems it >> does in the Vim docs, even though it doesn't really make >> sense (unless it's perhaps the opposite of 'wrong justify' >> which is a nice oxymoron even though grammatically flawed). >> (Actually, I think there some left-alignment assumption made >> in this case.) >> >> In other cases, 'right justify' is used to mean 'right >> align,' similarly 'left justify' to mean 'left align.' With >> this usage 'justify' simply means to 'make correct/straight' >> which is its earlier/more original meaning. > > I realise you're just remarking on the peculiarities of language, but > nostalgia > forces me to respond (I was quite close to typesetting systems a very long > time > ago). We always said "justify" to mean flush left and flush right. > > My recollection is that people started saying "right justify" when they > wanted to > clarify what "justify" meant (to an author, you might say "right justify", > but to > someone in the industry, you would say "justify"). > > The terms "left align" and "right align" are often used as alternatives to > "flush > left" and "flush right", but where I was, "align" referred to blocks like > tables, > diagrams, or a block of text. Text itself was flush left, or flush right, or > justified, or centered. > > My personal view is that "left justify" was a term invented after the fact: > since > there was a "right justify", there had to be a "left justify". But in fact, > "right > justify" was itself invented, to soften the jargon. > > John
Nice clarification. Well, Vim's ":left" (or the default) means flush left (ragged right), ":right" means flush right (ragged left), ":center" means, well, centered text (and ragged on both sides). Vim isn't able to add variable numbers of spaces between words to make the text come out justified (i.e., flush on both margins). It might, in some cases, be possible to justify monospace text this way by means of a script, but is it worth it? For the same price (or almost), you can write it in HTML and have a browser print it justified in Times New Roman, Helvetica, or any other font of your choice (provided of course that the chosen font is installed on your computer). Best regards, Tony. -- Without ice cream life and fame are meaningless. --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message from the "vim_dev" maillist. For more information, visit http://www.vim.org/maillist.php -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
