Re: Sentence-end punctuation

[Greg A. Woods]

[ On Friday, August 31, 2001 at 17:46:45 (+0200), Michael Piotrowski wrote: ]
> Subject: Sentence-end punctuation
> 
> I just noticed that for all languages except French, langdefs contains
> the same sentence-end definitions as for English.  When using
> TeX-style spacing, this means that a larger space is automatically
> used after:
> 
>    . : ! ? .) ?) !) .' !' ?'

This is partially true for troff-style spacing too, at least if you
follow the unwritten guideline that an end of line always follow a
sentence ending in troff input.

> However, is this behavior really appropriate for these languages?  I'm
> only sure about German, and for German it should be the same as for
> French.  What about the other languages supported by Lout?  Since
> changing the language definitions on a per-user basis requires copying
> the setup file, I think it would be good if the defaults were correct.

I didn't really think there was any difference between the "Romanesque"
languages for the typeset _output_, but if you say so....  :-)

In that vein though it's important to note that many guides to
preparation of electronic manuscripts (at least all the ones I've ever
read) have always recommended leaving two spaces after punctuation that
ends sentences.

-- 
                                                        Greg A. Woods

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