> > *or some other markup language that allows text reflow*
Text reflow? What the hell is that? <https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Alhadis/Coding-Style/master/README.md> =) Seriously though, I advocate the "one sentence per line" rule in reflow-friendly languages as much as possible. Aside from the obvious benefits to diffing and version control, it facilitates code review — I remember leaving feedback on a pull-request at GitHub that had three *paragraphs* one one line (that's right, not sentences, *entire paragraphs*). Since I was proof-reading, all my comments would have been easier to follow had they been written under the relevant line-numbers... (screenshot <https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/2346707/47905214-a0fd6d00-deda-11e8-93a4-5736274c131a.png> if you need help visualising). Total pain-in-the-ass... On Wed, 3 Jul 2019 at 01:54, Tadziu Hoffmann <hoffm...@usm.uni-muenchen.de> wrote: > > > A personal false-identification hazard: > > in the court of groff I will be declared innocent if I call > > myself M. Douglas McIlroy, > > but will be sentenced if I call myself Mr. Douglas McIlroy, > > Not sure what you mean here. Groff will treat both exactly the > same, it's TeX that will treat them differently (period after > lower-case letter = end of sentence, period following capital > letter = not end of sentence). > > In groff it's much simpler: end of sentence is recognized as > period at end of line or period followed by two spaces. > (Ditto for question mark and exclamation mark.) > Excess spaces will be treated by groff as usual, i.e., just > copied as-is to the output. > > Consider the attached example. The resulting text in nroff > with the exaggerated sentence space, and the number of spaces > in the output, are: > > > Output Number of spaces > ------------------------------------------------------ > M. Douglas McIlroy 1 > Mr. Douglas McIlroy 1 > M. Douglas McIlroy 7 = 1 + 6 > Mr. Douglas McIlroy 7 = 1 + 6 > M. Douglas McIlroy 7 = 2 - 1 + 6 > Mr. Douglas McIlroy 7 = 2 - 1 + 6 > M. Douglas McIlroy 9 = 4 - 1 + 6 > Mr. Douglas McIlroy 9 = 4 - 1 + 6 > M. Douglas McIlroy 2 > Mr. Douglas McIlroy 2 > M. Douglas McIlroy 4 > Mr. Douglas McIlroy 4 > > > The "roff" manpage suggests: > > Start each sentence on a line of its own, for the spacing > after a dot is handled differently depending on whether it > terminates an abbreviation or a sentence. To distinguish > both cases, do a line break after each sentence. > > (I guess what is actually meant is "should typographically be > handled differently", because groff has no way to automatically > recognize abbreviations.) > > The recommendation is also useful (even when you're using TeX > or HTML or some other markup language that allows text reflow) > if you are keeping documents in a line-oriented version control > system, because it restricts the differences detected between > versions, in that it does not cause an entire paragraph to > become flagged as different if only one sentence is changed. > > >
