Re: paragraphs.el: do forward-sentence and friends not work?

[Stephen J. Turnbull]

David Reitter writes:

 > On 13 Feb 2008, at 17:27, Andreas Schwab wrote:
 > >>
 > >> Maybe I misunderstand the purpose of this function, but `forward-
 > >> sentence' doesn't work for me. It always jumps to the end of the  
 > >> paragraph
 > >> rather than to the end of the sentence.
 > >
 > > You need to set sentence-end-double-space to nil.
 > 
 > That works. Why is this variable not nil by default?

Because AFAIK it's still Chicago Manual of Style-standard to follow a
sentence-ending period with two spaces in typed documents.  (Even with
a proportional font, Emacs will not insert extra visual space to
delimit a sentence unless it's present in the document.)

Many people find this more readable; the only people I've ever seen
say it's less readable undercut the argument by simultaneously
complaining about the inefficiency of typing multiple spaces.  So I
think the default should be sentence-end-double-space is t to
encourage readability.