Re: [Groff] Re: UTP paragraph spacing

[Jon Snader]

On Wed, Jul 17, 2002 at 04:56:53PM -0700, Meg McRoberts wrote:
> I'm loving this discussion, but how many of the rest of you are
> interested?  Should we take it off-list if we want to continue?
> 

I'm enjoying it a lot too, and also learning a great deal.  Unless
the rest of the list objects, I'd like to see it stay here.

> > Bringhurst talks about the rhythm of the page: eveness and
> > consistency of lines produces a rhythm that allows one to
> > concentrate on the content and know about its continuity.
> 
> This is definitely true in poetry and anthropology but is it true
> for technical manuals?  My impression is that much of the technical
> audience is ill-inclined to read the whole page period -- I have often
> handed a page to someone to review when the page was 2/3 text plus a
> code sample, and they'll grab it, check the code sample, and hand it
> back.  It seems that many technical people read displays, lists, and
> code samples and ignore the rest of the prose.
> 

Perhaps, but *I* always read the whole page, and anyone who is actually
reading a book would, I think, read the supporting material as well as
the code.

> 
> Technical people have also told me that the 5-space indent is unnatural
> for them -- they are so used to the 8-space indent that is commonly used
> in C code.  I was surprised by this but I honor it whenever possible.
>  

In my real life, I write software (a lot of it) and I never use 8 space
tabs.  The problem is that the after 2 or 3 levels of nesting, you run
out of space.  I can't think of anyone who uses 8 spaces these days.
For example, in vi (and siblings) I set my tab to 4 spaces so that in
the editor each level is indented by 4.  If you were to look at the
code outside of the editor, you would think I was using 8 space indents,
but that's because the default tab for printers and displays is 8 spaces.

> 
> Chances are that this is true for most of us on this list.  But it seems
> that a large part of the technical community doesn't read a lot except
> when absolutely necessary, so in many cases, the technical manuals are
> all that they read.
> 

Manuals?  We don't read no stinken manuals 8-).

Jon Snader