On 2009-03-16 13:19 +0100, Noah Slater wrote:
> On Mon, Mar 16, 2009 at 09:18:00AM +0100, Sven Joachim wrote:
>> This is actually correct, because if it were moved to the first line it
>> would change the semantics of the text: the sentence would end with the
>> "bbbbbbbbb.", while it does not in the original. That's because by
>> default a dot only ends a sentence if followed by a newline or _two_
>> spaces, see the user option sentence-end-double-space:
>
> This is extremely counter-intuitive, but thanks for the explanation.
>
> Using two spaces for sentence termination was originally a workaround for
> mechanical typewriters, because they could not properly adjust the spacing
> between words and punctuation. I do not think that GNU Emacs should be
> promoting
> the useless continuation of this outdated practice.
Doing this anyway has the advantage that you can distinguish between
sentence ends and abbreviations, which would otherwise be impossible.
This is important for the various commands that operate on sentences.
Taking into account that this is documented in the GNU Coding Standards
and Emacs is the standard editor of the GNU project, I don't expect the
default behavior to be changed any time soon, if ever.
> Moreover, it seems to me like GNU Emacs is in error with its application of
> this
> rule. The double space after a terminating full stop was to fake the spacing
> that would normally have been present before the start of the next sentence.
> There is no reason why this would have been required when the full stop sits
> at
> the end of a line. Why GNU Emacs would enforce that a full stop be followed by
> two spaces at the end of a line is totally beyond me.
It does not do that, where did you get that impression? If you insert a
newline after a period, Emacs will treat that period as a sentence end.
>> If you set sentence-end-double-space to nil, then the "bbbbbbbbb." is
>> moved to the first line, since the sentence ends after it in the
>> original text.
>
> Thanks, this worked.
Only remember to use two spaces at the end of sentences if you ever
contribute to GNU. :-)
Cheers,
Sven
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