Re: Variable-width font indentation

[Yuri Khan]

On Wed, Mar 7, 2018 at 3:55 AM, Richard Stallman <address@hidden> wrote:

> shr is a facility that renders HTML.
> I'm talking about using M-q to do filling
> that looks good with variable-width fonts.

For word processing purposes, you should not need manual or
semi-automated filling such as M-q provides. Proper word processing
operates two level of abstraction higher.

Level +0: you directly affect where words end up using spaces and line
feeds. This is the level that M-q works on.

Level +1: you specify a paper size for the document or a sections,
and, for each paragraph, a left margin, a right margin, a font, and a
paragraph alignment (left, center, right, or justified). The layout
engine automatically chops the paragraph into lines for display and
print purposes according to these settings.

Level +2: you do not specify individual formatting settings on each
paragraph; instead, you specify a paragraph style that specifies all
these things. (Like Emacs faces provide a level of indirection for
face attributes.)

So: you don’t fill a paragraph with a left margin of 30 spaces and a
right margin at position 72. You designate the paragraph as Addressee,
and the Addressee style specifies a left margin of 50% paper width and
inherits its right margin of 1 inch from the Default style.

All of which is, of course, achievable with HTML + CSS (or a moral
equivalent). WYSIWYG editing for that is possible but 20 years of
observation show that users of WYSIWYG systems tend to produce (at
best) level +1 documents rather than +2.