Regarding coding style

[D'Arcy J.M. Cain]

On 7 Mar 2008 17:40:08 GMT
Jon Ribbens <jon+usenet at unequivocal.co.uk> wrote:
> Well, no, it's to follow a particular person's choice out of the many
> and various competing rules of "correct English usage". Personally,
> I dislike double spaces after sentences, but it is not wrong to put
> them there any more than it is wrong not to put them there.
> Consistency is far more important (hence the rule, I presume).

Warning: Opinion follows possibly influenced by insufficient research.

I have read the arguments about single or double spacing and find that
they can be distilled down to the following:

You should use double space for monospaced fonts and single for
proportional.  I reject this argument for two reasons.  One is
consistency.  It is entirely possible for the same document to be
rendered in multiple ways and you may not be aware of them ahead of
time.  The second is that it seems to me that programs that use
proportional fonts should be able to make any space between sentences
render properly by their own rules so the number of spaces should be
irrelevant.  I am not swayed by arguments that they don't handle this
properly yet.

The arguments for one over the other fall into these basic ones.  Use
double spaces to make the document easier to read, especially by people
who read a lot and tend to skim to absorb as much information as
possible.  Use single space because it makes the document display
nicer.  This suggests to me that the schism is probably between two
different types of people, text/information oriented and
display/presentation oriented.  I don't see any way to appeal to both.

-- 
D'Arcy J.M. Cain <darcy at druid.net>         |  Democracy is three wolves
http://www.druid.net/darcy/                |  and a sheep voting on
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