Re: [Groff] new automake system

[Ralph Corderoy]

Hi Bertrand,

> Also, isn't groff by default displaying a single space after a full
> stop ?

If only one is entered, yes.

    $ nroff
    .pl 1
    Foo.
    Bar. Xyzzy.  The end.      P.S.\&
    Just one.
    ^D
    Foo.  Bar. Xyzzy.  The end.      P.S. Just one.
    $

The end of a sentence at the end of a line correctly has the next
sentence two spaces away;  "Foo.  Bar.".  If the input has only one
between words on the same line then only one is output;  "Bar. Xyzzy.".
Or if there's many then many are produced;  "The end.      P.S.".

Sometimes you want to ensure a widened gap won't appear if something
that looks like an end of sentence happens to fall at the end of an
input line and that's done with the zero-width space \&.  "e.g.", and
"i.e." are common examples.  If you write "i.e. the aardvark", then
re-formatting the input in the editor might cause poor typesetting.
To avoid forgetting this, some do

    $ nroff
    .pl 1
    .ds eg e.g.\&
    Foo, \*(eg 
    bar.
    ^D
    Foo, e.g. bar.
    $

and have the makefile check for raw "e.g." in the text.

A old common form of input is to have the input lines stop at the end of
a sentence, and the end of a long clause come to that.  This often makes
it easy to shuffle chunks of text in ed(1).  :-)

Cheers, Ralph.