[Users] word wrapping

[blind Pete]

On Sun, 26 Oct 2014 15:04:54 +1100
blind Pete <peter_s_d at fastmail.com.au> wrote:
[snip]

Hi again, 

The response has been surprising; it seems that I am not the only old
person here.  

Just in case there is anyone who is really old is reading this, the
spaces between the words are here to stay.  It makes the text much
easier to read and we don't have to use expensive vellum any more.  

Historically, typography was an art with no hard and fast rules.
All of the printers were trying to represent the language, or languages,
well and out do their competitors.  Things have more or less
standardised within English, but that does not mean that we can not set
new standards.  :-)  Consider emoticons, for example.  

There are at least four different definitions of the point.
1)  /Postscript/ version one defines a point as one seventy second of
    one inch.  Later versions of /Postscript/ backtracked and stated 
    that the "design unit" of 1/72" was not a printer's point.  
2)  The English printer's point of slightly less than 1/72".  
3)  The American printer's point, very slightly different again.  
4)  The Australian Bureau of Meteorology used to quote rainfall in
    points - that is hundredths of an inch.  
Don't use points for precision work.  

Ligatures (multiple letters combined into a single glyph) have been
shunned as needlessly complex, but in Arabic they have become an art
form.  They have letters that change shape depending on whether they
are at the start of the word, the end of the word, or enclosed.  And
they write from right to left.  English is easier.  

UTF has dozens of white space characters.  The ones that I am
interested in are the "en" (the width of the letter 'N', used to
separate words), the "em" (twice as wide as an en, and used to separate
sentences), and the non breaking space (the word processor's night
mare).  Aside: How do you enter a NBSP into CM?  I just tried
<ctl><space>, <alt><space>, and <super><space>; without success.  

If you can handle spaces, then hyphens are not too bad.  You just have
to know the difference between a hard hyphen ("re-cover" is not the
same as "recover" and should not be split), a discretionary hyphen
("non-standard" may be split), soft hyphens (added and removed by the
word processor as required), and invisible hyphenation hints.  Apart
from minor inconsistencies between official standards, web browsers,
dialects, and common ignorance; it is all straight forward -- over the
Niagara Falls.  

Distinguishing between a new line and a new paragraph was not a problem
on the printed page, but with text that can be re-flowed it is nice to
have an unambiguous paragraph marker.  Should the polite line break
at 72 characters be added during composition?  Or only on sending?  

If complex algorithms make you nervous, this might be a disturbing
message.  Sorry.   

Now, consider variable width fonts...  

I'm not trying to troll, I'm just thinking about some very minor
improvements, and whether they are worth the effort - or even
possible.  Hopefully someone found this mildly interesting.  

-- 
testing
bP
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