Re: two spaces after sentence + other doc janitorial duties

[Andy Wingo <wingo@pobox.com>]

Heya Ludovic,

On Fri 02 Jul 2010 14:23, ludo@gnu.org (Ludovic Courtès) writes:

> Andy Wingo <wingo@pobox.com> writes:
>
>> On Fri 25 Jun 2010 18:35, Thien-Thi Nguyen <ttn@gnuvola.org> writes:
>>
>>> Normally, texinfo source should have two spaces after each sentence:
>>>
>>>    Blah the first. Blah more.      ;; only one space, not cool
>>>    Blah the first.  Blah more.     ;; two spaces, ok
>>
>> Why is this the case? TeX itself gets this right, why can't makeinfo?
>
> I’m not sure whether/how TeX gets it right.

For TeX, the end of a sentence comes when a terminal punctuation mark
(e.g., `.' or `!') is followed by any amount of whitespace, and not
preceded by a capital letter. For example the period after the T in
"I.T. Department" does not end the sentence.

You do have to play tricks with TeX when you're doing something that
doesn't conform to its expectations; see "Inserting Space" in the
texinfo manual.

But since you have to placate TeX already, for print output, it seems
the one-space or two-space shenanigans are completely redundant, and
provide no new information. Info output is already reflowed in
paragraphs, I don't see why its textual rendering doesn't follow TeX's
rules rather than introducing its own redundancies on top of it.

If it is how it must be for GNU, though, then I will try to change. But
I don't like it.

Andy
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