Re: End-of-sentence spacing

[Dave Kemper]

On 12/21/20, G. Branden Robinson <g.branden.robinson@gmail.com> wrote:
> I thought you and I worked to fix this earlier this year?

We did do some work in this section, but I don't recall addressing
this terminology in particular.  At the time, it seemed pretty small
potatoes.

Taken as a whole, I believe the section is perfectly clear.  The
problem comes in when someone reads only the first paragraph, maybe to
refresh their memory or just get a bird's-eye view of what the request
does.

>  -- Request: .ss word-space-size [sentence-space-size]
>  -- Register: \n[.ss]
>  -- Register: \n[.sss]
>      Set the sizes of spaces between words and sentences.  Their units
>      are twelfths of the space width parameter of the current font.
>      Initially both the WORD-SPACE-SIZE and SENTENCE-SPACE-SIZE are 12.
>      Negative values are not permitted.  The request is ignored if there
>      are no arguments.

Someone familiar with typographic terminology may stop here, thinking
they understand all they need to, but they will be misled by groff's
unconventional use of "sentence space" to mean additional rather than
total space between sentences.

It seemed a minor thing before, but now that it's tripped up the
author of possibly the most elaborate macro package published in the
roff language's 50-year history, I wonder if that's worth revisiting.