Re: lynx-dev LYNX: "&#151": em-dash?

[brian j. pardy]

On Fri, 4 Sep 1998 address@hidden wrote:

> In a recent note, brian j. pardy said:
> 
> > Date: Thu, 3 Sep 1998 19:16:56 -0700
> > 
> > > > This code:  who—he's my boss—who runs
> > >  
> > > you're right, it should be ` -- ': that's correct secretarial style.
> > > 
> > > and while we're on it, Lynx should write  2  spaces after a full stop:
> > > that's also professional secretarial practice.
> > 
> > I don't think that lynx should be in the business of correcting
> > punctuational errors/preferences when it comes to text presented on the
> > web -- I'd much prefer to leave that to the whim of the author.
> > 
> This isn't correcting errors or overriding preferences; these are
> two legitimate technical issues: the former concerns presentation of
> a conventionally wide character in a monospaced display; the latter
> is not overriding the author's preference -- the standard requires
> that sequences of spaces be treated as a single space on unpreformatted
> text input, but leaves open the presentation of sentence breaks.

Ah yes -- I wasn't very clear in what I meant. I think I agree with the
re-formatting for the ` -- ' (or possibly without spaces), what I was
commenting on was the 2 spaces after a full stop. 

> Practically, there's good reason to avoid 2 spaces after a full stop,
> to avoid the jarring "Dr.  Smith" effect.  You can't count on
>                          ^^
> the author's using an NBSP here.

For exactly that reason. 

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