Re: Rendering of xref tag

["Mark Levitt" <mark levitt whsmithnet co uk>]

"Gregory Leblanc" <gleblanc linuxweasel com> wrote:

> Ack, please don't go into the spaces debate here too!  I just read this

Sorry. But, I can't resist. Plus, the outcome of the debate on KDE doc was
to use a single space. :)

> argument on another list (KDE doc, actually).  The space between
> sentences should be slightly larger than the space between words.  The
> easiest way to do that right now is to just use a double space, unless

Yes, it should be slightly larger. That's why a proportionally spaced font
is so important to readability. It's why typewritten pages and ASCII
terminals are crappy ways of reading text. Monospaced fonts should have two
spaces after a period, but no help text or HTML page should ever be
displayed in a monospace font (code examples being the exception, but then
those don't have sentences).

> you want to type in a character entity after every sentence (since
> automatic determination of this is quite dificult).  Not to mention that
> the character entity would probably end up being converted to a double
> space for most output formats anyway.

No, you're missing the point. The layout engine doesn't need to do anything
at all except specify a proportionally spaced font for the main body text. I
don't think there are any output formats we care about that don't have the
ability to render proportionally spaced fonts.

Go to a bookstore and pull any book of the shelf. I promise it will use a
single space after a period.

Look at any professionally designed web site (http://www.linuxtoday.com,
http://www.guardian.co.uk, http://news.bbc.co.uk, http://www.salon.com, etc)
you'll find they use proportionally spaced fonts with a single space between
sentences.



Some more references:

http://desktoppub.about.com/library/weekly/blrules-spaces.htm