Path: csiph.com!xmission!news.snarked.org!news.linkpendium.com!news.linkpendium.com!panix!usenet.stanford.edu!not-for-mail From: Dave Newsgroups: gnu.groff.bug Subject: [bug #58450] additional inter-sentence spaces should be stretched in fully justified text Date: Wed, 27 May 2020 00:37:51 -0400 (EDT) Lines: 93 Approved: bug-groff@gnu.org Message-ID: References: <20200526-233749.sv93119.94426@savannah.gnu.org> NNTP-Posting-Host: lists.gnu.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain;charset=UTF-8 X-Trace: usenet.stanford.edu 1590554273 7294 209.51.188.17 (27 May 2020 04:37:53 GMT) X-Complaints-To: action@cs.stanford.edu To: Dave , bug-groff@gnu.org Envelope-to: bug-groff@gnu.org X-PHP-Originating-Script: 1001:sendmail.php X-Savane-Server: savannah.gnu.org:443 [2001:470:142::72] X-Savane-Project: groff X-Savane-Tracker: bugs X-Savane-Item-ID: 58450 User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux i686; rv:45.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/45.0 X-Apparently-From: 2605:a601:ab42:5b00:d79a:70a3:b6a4:34bf (Savane authenticated user barx) In-Reply-To: X-BeenThere: bug-groff@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.23 Precedence: list List-Id: "Bug reports for the GNU version of nroff, troff et al" List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-Mailman-Original-Message-ID: <20200526-233749.sv93119.94426@savannah.gnu.org> Xref: csiph.com gnu.groff.bug:1859 URL: Summary: additional inter-sentence spaces should be stretched in fully justified text Project: GNU troff Submitted by: barx Submitted on: Tue 26 May 2020 11:37:49 PM CDT Category: Core Severity: 3 - Normal Item Group: New feature Status: None Privacy: Public Assigned to: None Open/Closed: Open Discussion Lock: Any Planned Release: None _______________________________________________________ Details: == Background == The groff .ss request takes two parameters, the second one specifying the additional inter-sentence space. This is a groff extension; classical troff's .ss request (as documented in CSTR #54) took only one parameter. In fully justified text, groff stretches inter-word spaces, while keeping this additional inter-sentence space at a fixed width. == The problem == On output lines where spaces are stretched for justification, stretching one type of space but not the other alters the ratio of inter-word space to inter-sentence space that the user has requested with the two parameters to .ss. In extreme cases, where inter-word spaces are significantly stretched, the additional inter-sentence space can become dwarfed by the amount of stretching done to the inter-word spaces on the line, rendering the additional inter-sentence space imperceptible. _Comment #4 of bug #54101 _ contains an example of this, showing that with large adjustments, spaces between words and those between sentences become nigh indistinguishable (to the point that the person who created the example thought no additional inter-sentence space was being added at all), surely not the desired outcome when the user has asked for inter-sentence spaces to be two to four times the width of inter-word spaces. == The solution == Further discussion in bug #54101 came to no resolution how best to address this. According to this ranting but well-documented blog post , professional typography stopped using extra sentence spacing between the 1920s and the 1950s, breaking with two centuries of nearly universal typographic practice. Ideally, when a groff user asks for additional inter-sentence space with the second parameter of .ss, groff would adjust these spaces in line with that historical practice. I do not know the details of that practice. This blog post states, "when a line needed to be expanded or compressed ... the aesthetics of how to handle the various width spaces... had complex rules that can be found in many of the manuals cited above," a vagueness that makes sense given that the question of adjusting is beyond this post's scope. But it does quote a passage from the 1906 Chicago Manual of Style with some Byzantine (and, to my modern eyes, not entirely comprehensible) rules for adjusting a line, wherein space is added or removed depending on the shapes of the adjacent characters, among other considerations. This is probably not only inadvisable in modern groff (it concerns a typesetting paradigm where other marks of punctuation also got something other than a standard word space after them), but not even possible, as I don't think groff has any awareness of letter shapes (else why would user intervention be required to avoid a collision between an italic _f_ and a roman end parenthesis?). Since bug #54101 was primarily concerned with a different (though related) issue, I'm opening this bug report to track this one. Much of the text here comes from that bug report. _______________________________________________________ Reply to this item at: _______________________________________________ Message sent via Savannah https://savannah.gnu.org/