Re: White space (Was: Graph package, etc.)

[Aaron Roydhouse]

==> On Tue, 8 Feb 1994 09:50:29 +0100, address@hidden said:

Olaf.Weber> As Knuth notes, you do not usually want a linebreak
Olaf.Weber> between initials or `Mr.' and the name that follows.
Olaf.Weber> Hence `Mr.~J.~H.~Kingston' in TeX, where `~' prevents the
Olaf.Weber> break, and also makes sure only an interword space is
Olaf.Weber> used.  This solves both the breaking problem and the
Olaf.Weber> spacing problem for most intersentence periods.

Which is why one of the most used definition I use in lout is:

# ye tilde operator to keep words together on a line
def "~" left x right y { x |1s y }

I sometimes need to be able to indicate places where for semantic
reasons I don't want a line break.

I don't prefer two spaces between sentences anyway, or if I do, then I
want that gap to be explicit in the target language (PostScript) and
not an accident of adjacent characters. For me, two adjacent spaces
are more often accidental anyway, and I'd rather not be constantly
worried about trailing whitespace coming back to haunt my printouts.

Some people, presumably like Jeff, are more precise with their white
space, but some us need help :-) A "munch"/"nomunch" break option
would be most welcome.

Aaron.