Re: [Groff] [Heirloom] Double word space after :

[Mike Bianchi]

On Fri, Nov 14, 2014 at 01:53:20PM -0500, Peter Schaffter wrote:
> > ... ease of reading or better comprehension ...
> >                            have nothing to do with "the rules."   Sigh.
>       :
> The matter gets more complicated when you have sentences that end
> with "r." or "y.".
>       :
> ... I've never figured out is whether it's possible to set up kern pairs in
> groff font files that have "space" as the first  element of the pair.  ...

As someone who never wanders beyond Times, Courier, Helvetica and DingBats,
it seems to me that the kerning and spaces-after-whatever rules should be an
_adjustable_ intrinsic aspect of the individual fonts, not rules built into
the processor (groff) or even the macro packages.

"Adjustable" because I have my own ideas of what looks good, especially
when writing technical documents vs. when writing literature.

But I dream.  Groff is what it is because there exist works which read as well
as they do because groff is faithful to its predecessors, warts and all, and
does what it does better than the alternatives, at least in the eyes and minds
of its admirers.  For now, I pretty much love it as it is and accept (and pride
myself in sometimes mastering) its idiosyncrasies.

Someday there may be a successor typesetting system where the writer thinks
of the text in terms of _only_ I'm writing, and the typesetting _only_ in terms
of clear rules that make it all look pretty and correct.  Again, I dream.

-- 
 Mike Bianchi