Re: RFC: new vertical layout engine

[Kieren MacMillan]

Hi Werner,

> It really depends. IIRC, the Chicaco manual of style recommended this.

"The view at CMOS is that there is no reason for two spaces after a  
period in published work."
<http://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/CMS_FAQ/OneSpaceorTwo/ 
OneSpaceorTwo03.html>

Also see page 28 of Robert Bringhurst's "The Elements of  
Typographical Style" (*the* authoritative reference):
"As a general rule, no more than a single space is required after a  
period, a colon or any other mark of punctuation."

In other words, it doesn't depend: no serious style manual or guide  
recommends more than one space after a period (with rare exceptions  
like setting romanized Sanskrit, phonetics, etc.).

>   1) Editors like Emacs benefit from having two spaces after a full
>      stop so they can recognize the end of a sentence properly -- in
>      contrast to an abbreviation which is followed by a single space
>      only.
>
>   2) The `info' program needs two spaces a full stop for similar
>      reasons.
>
> Note that documentation in either HTML or PDF format created with
> texinfo doesn't show those two spaces.  It's just a means to better
> organize the source code and not related to the output.

I would imagine HTML would "do the right thing" (since the spaces  
are, I assume, not coded as &nbsp; in the source).

However, the PDF (e.g., the NR) *appears* to preserve double-space  
sentence separations — where (e.g., some specification/documentation)  
can I confirm that the process which generates the PDF version of the  
docs turns double-spaced source into single-space output?

Cheers,
Kieren.