Who are the "spacists"?

[Chris Angelico]

On Mon, Mar 20, 2017 at 9:48 AM, Mikhail V <mikhailwas at gmail.com> wrote:
> [regarding monospaced text]
> Or, for example collision detection, which is part
> of mouse text selection algorithm is much simpler, etc.
> These are IMO main reasons why it still often used.

I work extensively with MUDs, where traditionally ASCII text is
monospaced. It's normal to create alignment with spaces, and for tabs
to represent eight-space positions (so "abc\td" will take up nine
slots of width). But in the world of Unicode, it's not that simple.
Some text runs right-to-left, some characters have different widths
assigned, some have no width at all. My program has to cope with all
of these, including when you use the mouse to select text.

Monospacing is not about making it easier for the program; it's about
keeping things the way the human expects. I do not ever want my MUDs
or my shells to run with classic "proportionally-spaced" fonts, but I
do want them to be able to cope with RTL text etc. And they can.

ChrisA