On 23. Apr 2025, at 23:05, Eric Rescorla <[email protected]> wrote:
>
>
>
> On Wed, Apr 23, 2025 at 1:43 PM Carsten Bormann <[email protected]> wrote:
> > Formatted? Nothing, if the formatter knows it's all one paragraph. If
> > you're reading the source though then it's annoying, like this:
> >
> > Formatted?
> > Nothing, if the formatter knows it's all one paragraph.
> > If you're reading the source though then it's annoying, like this:
>
> Interesting.
> I find the second form (NSNL or OSPL) to be way more readable.
> I have no idea what I should feel annoyed of.
>
> This seems like a great example of "people have different tastes".
(I said I was curious.
Sure would like to know how people develop these tastes.)
> And unlike software where there is a lot of value in multiple people
> being able to work on the same code base and style issues get
> in the way, the number of people actively editing the same
> Markdown file is quite small, so is there any reason we can't
> just let people do their own thing, with perhaps some text
> somewhere about the impacts of those choices?
Not at all.
But the choice should be deliberate, which is helped by having names for the
alternatives.
Which is why I’ve been throwing names in the ring for two of the styles I’m
familiar with.
Maybe other people should give names to their manuscript styles.
(Here’s one: the annoying [!] one paragraph per line (OPPL) style…)
Note that a manuscript style not only describes the way the manuscript looks
like but also the results that an edit leaves:
Some styles are canonical (they always look the same regardless of how you got
there, e.g. OSPL or OPPL) and some are not (NSNL).
This discussion ensued because we want the RPC to format the text in the XML
form in one of these manuscript styles; we can ask them to use the style the
authors chose or attempt to define an “RFC style”…
.oOo.
In favor of those who like VT100-like 80 column restrictions (or ASR33-like
72!):
Typographers have long known that shorter lines can be more readable (which is
why most academic papers are formatted with two columns).
Bringhurst recommends 45 to 75 characters per line, with an optimum at 66.
This number is for typographic fonts.
The monospaced fonts we often use for editing manuscripts are typically 20-30 %
wider, so you’d probably get an optimum line width of 45 to 55 characters.
Sounds a bit radical to me; I’m most efficient if I stay within 70 columns for
manuscripts (*).
Grüße, Carsten
(*) I want my VT05…. Not really.
(A related annoyance is that source code in RFCs is still bound to ASR33 widths.
But that one is not about manuscripting flowing text…)
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