Hi Bertrand,
> Also, isn't groff by default displaying a single space after a full
> stop ?
If only one is entered, yes.
$ nroff
.pl 1
Foo.
Bar. Xyzzy. The end. P.S.\&
Just one.
^D
Foo. Bar. Xyzzy. The end. P.S. Just one.
$
The end of a sentence at the end of a line correctly has the next
sentence two spaces away; "Foo. Bar.". If the input has only one
between words on the same line then only one is output; "Bar. Xyzzy.".
Or if there's many then many are produced; "The end. P.S.".
Sometimes you want to ensure a widened gap won't appear if something
that looks like an end of sentence happens to fall at the end of an
input line and that's done with the zero-width space \&. "e.g.", and
"i.e." are common examples. If you write "i.e. the aardvark", then
re-formatting the input in the editor might cause poor typesetting.
To avoid forgetting this, some do
$ nroff
.pl 1
.ds eg e.g.\&
Foo, \*(eg
bar.
^D
Foo, e.g. bar.
$
and have the makefile check for raw "e.g." in the text.
A old common form of input is to have the input lines stop at the end of
a sentence, and the end of a long clause come to that. This often makes
it easy to shuffle chunks of text in ed(1). :-)
Cheers, Ralph.
