[bug #58500] default value for second parameter to .ss should follow modern typographic convention

[G. Branden Robinson]

Follow-up Comment #1, bug #58500 (project groff):

I disagree with this proposal.  While I think you're right to characterize the
growing consensus among professional writers who _use_ computerized
typesetting systems but don't _develop_ them, I don't think groff should be
bound by that consensus.

Frankly, as our irritable but erudite (and above all, research-driven)
Heraclitean friend you noted in bug #58450 observed, much of that consensus
seems to arise from ignorance and a seemingly willful refusal to interrogate
the typographic simplifications imposed by the semi-automation of typesetting
with the Linotype machine and similar.

I'm all for documenting ".ss 12 0" to tell people how to kill off that
additional inter-sentence space if that is what they (or their editors or
instructors) or demand, but I am pretty uncomfortable with changing the
defaults.

Moreover, I think we should liaise with the TeX community before proceeding
along such an iconoclastic path.  That community and ours are the only ones I
trust to produce well-reasoned opinions in this field.

Here's a counter-example, by Russell Harper, of a well-reasoned opinion:

https://cmosshoptalk.com/2020/03/24/one-space-or-two/

Yes, there's some stuff about historical practice in there, though it compares
poorly in depth and breadth to the link in bug #58450.

I would draw the reader's attention to how much of the emphasis in Harper's
hortatory has to do with the _input conventions_ one uses with Microsoft Word.
 He pops open dialog boxes to do search and replace.  He says "your editor"
will take your second space after a sentence out again, which presumes the
distribution of documents for review in source form--_rather than the form in
which they will appear in print_.  One can easily infer that he fears the
tedium of having to distinguish between different sorts of space when the only
tool he has to express them in his source document is the number of times he
presses the space bar.  He wants to pop open the dialog box, click the
"Replace All" button and be done forever.

This is not only unspeakably crude typography, but unspeakably crude computer
use.  This is a man who can operate a car and thereby believes himself an
automotive engineer.

Harper is representative of the bulk of the professional writing community,
which seems to consider Microsoft Word the ne plus ultra of composition and
publishing.  When I was in school, students were taught to compose _pages_, as
opposed to text, in tools like Quark Xpress and Aldus PageMaker.  Why do these
receive no mention from Harper?

The false sense of expertise that WYSIWYG systems has imparted to these people
is grievous indeed.

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