Re: Summary: Sp after Per

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Message-id: <9307022154.AA05222@eitech.com>
To: Terry Allen <terry@ora.com>
Cc: www-talk@nxoc01.cern.ch
Subject: Re: Summary: Sp after Per 
In-reply-to: Your message of "Fri, 02 Jul 1993 13:54:01 PDT."
             <199307022054.AA23702@ora.com> 
Date: Fri, 02 Jul 1993 15:00:14 -0700
From: "Jay C. Weber" <weber@yoyo.eitech.com>
Status: RO

> From: Terry Allen <terry@ora.com>
> To: www-talk@nxoc01.cern.ch
> 
> The consensus seems to be that no one wants to bother with
> extra space after a period that ends a sentence.  There is
> much confusion about why this was the traditional usage,
> but no matter.  
> 
> Consequently, browser developers should suppress this spacing
> if it is the default (Motif?) or not invoke it if it is 
> optional.

I think that this is a bad idea.  Default treatment of spacing
after periods should be left up to individual browser developers.

See, there are at least the following three positions on the
"who controls the presentation" issue:

1) the source should not be allowed to control details of
   the presentation

2) the source should be able to explicitly override browser
   preferences on presentation details

3) presentation defaults should be standardized so that
   the source determines the presentation on any browser

Your suggestion is in the spirit of #3.  Not only do I (as
both an author and a developer) like #2 better, but I think
it is the only one with the potential of scaling up.

So, getting back to the particular issue, we should let the
browser decide on post-period spacing and perhaps add a
mechanism to HTML+ to stipulate the author's preference.

Jay Weber
EIT