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

[Dave]

Follow-up Comment #2, bug #58500 (project groff):

[comment #1 comment #1:]
> 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.

That's not how I would characterize this consensus.  I'm not looking at who is
making the decisions, but at the decisions themselves.

As of 2020, with very little exception, major publishers use the same spacing
between words and sentences.  We can't peer into those publishing houses and
tell if those decisions were made by professional writers, software
developers, or janitors.  All we can do is look at the results, which tell us
that major publishers today follow this practice.  This makes it the current
industry standard.

You may hate it.  I'm no fan of it myself.  But no less a typographical
authority than Robert Bringhurst endorses it in _The Elements of Typographic
Style_.  His opinion carries a weight that yours and mine don't.  Pretty much
every modern style manual agrees: there's an entire Wikipedia article
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sentence_spacing_in_language_and_style_guides>
documenting this consensus.  (And given how many details these various style
guides diverge on, the unanimity on this issue is remarkable.)

It's hard to dismiss every major publisher and style guide as guilty of
typographic ineptitude.  Ultimately, it doesn't matter whether the current
standard arose from ignorance, or as a cost-saving measure, or as the result
of a long-ago meeting of the Secret Cabal of Typesetters whose minutes we are
not privy to.  Even if you claim all these publishers and guides are "wrong,"
collectively they define the industry standard.  "Wrong" is the new right.

Groff's default sentence spacing is out of step with the industry standard,
and that's a bug regardless how much you or I may wish the industry standard
were something other than what it is.

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