cvs commit: doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/bsdinstall chapter.sgml

[Benedict Reuschling]

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Am 12.10.11 18:41, schrieb Ulrich Spörlein:
> On Wed, 2011-10-12 at 09:41:17 -0400, Glen Barber wrote:
>> On 10/12/11 9:37 AM, Niclas Zeising wrote:
>>> On 10/12/11 15:31, Glen Barber wrote:
>>>> On 10/12/11 9:27 AM, Ulrich Spörlein wrote:
>>>>> On Mon, 2011-10-10 at 17:29:26 +0000, Glen Barber wrote:
>>>>>> gjb         2011-10-10 17:29:26 UTC
>>>>>>
>>>>>>    FreeBSD doc repository
>>>>>>
>>>>>>    Modified files:
>>>>>>      en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/bsdinstall chapter.sgml
>>>>>>    Log:
>>>>>>    Use two spaces between end of sentence and beginning of sentence.
>>>>>>
>>>>>>    Revision  Changes    Path
>>>>>>    1.9       +10 -10   
>>>>>> doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/bsdinstall/chapter.sgml
>>>>>
>>>>> Why oh why? Please stop doing that, it's pointless, annoying and will
>>>>> get lost with paragraph reformatting eventually and is not significant
>>>>> in the generated output.
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>> It follows the FDP standards as noted directly before Chapter 10.1 here:
>>>>
>>>> http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en/books/fdp-primer/writing-style.html
>>>>
>>>
>>> From what I've come to understand it does not matter for the rendered
>>> output. 
>>
>> The only "significant" spaces in SGML/HTML output is " ".
>>
>>> It makes the source (i.e. sgml file) more readable though.
>>
>> In addition to being "proper" writing style.
> 
> Yes, the 20th century called and wants you to return your typewriter.
> 
> Please stop this double-spaced end of sentence madness.
> http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/technology/2011/01/space_invaders.html

I've read the article, but my experience is the complete opposite. In
school we learned that there is one space after the full stop. I do not
find a single email in my work email nor in FreeBSD emails from users of
all ages that use two spaces, either. My guess is that nowadays, this
two spaces thing has been indeed been a thing of the past an no one uses
it anymore (or they are simply too lazy to hit the spacebar a  second time).

When I learned the ways of being a doc committer, I was under the
impression that it was project convention (similar to style(9)), but I
did not ask and ran with it. Probably a good example for not taking
anything for granted and question some of the this that have been done
since "the dawn of time(tm)".

My suggestion is that we involve doceng@ (which I did in CC) and ask for
a decision. A patch to the fdp-primer correcting this should be fairly
easy, changing what nearly every doc committer has learned during
his/her mentee phase in this regard is a different story.

I propose that once we decide to use just one single space in the
future, that new documents which are added to the doc tree should use
this new convention, but old documents should not be changed. This
reduces the amount of work for translators immensely. PRs that are being
filed with sweeping doc patches to correct this in old documents should
also be closed with a reference to the policy.

Your thoughts on this?

Cheers

Benedict Reuschling
FreeBSD Doc Committer

The FreeBSD Documentation Project
FreeBSD German Documentation Project - https://doc.bsdgroup.de
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