[OT] Re: Justifying text.

[Magnus Lie Hetland]

"François Pinard" <pinard at iro.umontreal.ca> wrote in message
news:mailman.1001794353.1862.python-list at python.org...
> [Magnus Lie Hetland]
> > [Boyd Roberts]
> > > [A.A]
>
[snip]
> > >
> > > a 'text editor' that justifies text is not a text editor.
>
> > What - you haven't heard of Emacs?  And C-u M-q?  (I'm sure vi has the
> > same functionality, as does the UNIX program fmt.)
>
> A few comments on that topic.
>
> * a `text editor' having useful functionalities is still a `text editor'.

Of course. I suspect the comment above was made in the belief that the
question was about typographic justification, such as in TeX (or Word or
something), neither of which is a text editor. (OK, so you can produce
plain text with both... <wink>)

> * `M-q' in Emacs does an elementary fill.

Yes.

> See GNU `fmt' for a more
>   sophisticated algorithm

Yes. I mentioned that...

> * `C-u M-q' is a very poor command to use with fixed width fonts.  I have
this
>   text among my canned replies:

That has nothing to do with fixed width fonts, IMO. It's more about
the fixed spacing. I mean, using a tt font in TeX you may still get
pretty paragraphs. I agree that what you get in Emacs isn't exactly
pretty :)

>   Sadly enough, many `man' programs implies such a presentation by
default,
>   much beyond the limits of good taste.

Well... Treating plain text as typography is stretching things a bit far...
I'm not sure I agree on your "good taste" comment here :)

>   Many of you might surely have
>   noticed how difficult it is to decipher some of these pages.

Not really. (Though I see your point.)

> --
> François Pinard   http://www.iro.umontreal.ca/~pinard

--

  Magnus Lie Hetland         http://www.hetland.org

 "Reality is that which, when you stop believing in
  it, doesn't go away."           -- Philip K. Dick