[Users] word wrapping
H.Merijn Brand
h.m.brand at xs4all.nl
Tue Oct 28 11:44:16 CET 2014
On Tue, 28 Oct 2014 10:37:01 +0100, wwp <subscript at free.fr> wrote:
> Hello blind,
>
>
> On Tue, 28 Oct 2014 19:17:57 +1100 blind Pete <peter_s_d at fastmail.com.au> wrote:
>
> > 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.
Don't use imperial for precision work at all. Use Metric :)
It still feels weird that font sizes are as imprecise as you describe.
One can have 12pt characters or 12 cpi fixed-width fonts. So very
counterintuitive
> > 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.
Same for Hebrew
There are still some (western)European ligatures that never clearly
defined their width, e.g.: æ œ ß ij
> > 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.
On *my* computer (OpenSUSE Linux) is is defined in Compose:
0000a0 NO-BREAK SPACE
<Multi_key> <space> <space>
There are more :)
000020 SPACE
0000a0 NO-BREAK SPACE
<Multi_key> <space> <space>
001680 OGHAM SPACE MARK
002002 EN SPACE
002003 EM SPACE
002004 THREE-PER-EM SPACE
002005 FOUR-PER-EM SPACE
002006 SIX-PER-EM SPACE
002007 FIGURE SPACE
002008 PUNCTUATION SPACE
<Multi_key> <space> <period>
002009 THIN SPACE
00200a HAIR SPACE
00200b ZERO WIDTH SPACE
00202f NARROW NO-BREAK SPACE
00205f MEDIUM MATHEMATICAL SPACE
002420 ␠ SYMBOL FOR SPACE
003000 IDEOGRAPHIC SPACE
00303f 〿 IDEOGRAPHIC HALF FILL SPACE
00feff ZERO WIDTH NO-BREAK SPACE
0e0020 TAG SPACE
> > 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.
IMHO, hyphens are just as bad, maybe even worse nowadays, as some
word-processors replace the default hyphen (a dash) with "smart"
hyphens that appear almost the same as a dash, making copy-paste for
command-lines from documentation untrustworthy:
ps ‐‐help
00002d - HYPHEN-MINUS
0000ad SOFT HYPHEN
<Multi_key> <minus> <minus> <space>
00058a ֊ ARMENIAN HYPHEN
001400 ᐀ CANADIAN SYLLABICS HYPHEN
001806 ᠆ MONGOLIAN TODO SOFT HYPHEN
002010 ‐ HYPHEN
002011 ‑ NON-BREAKING HYPHEN
002043 ⁃ HYPHEN BULLET
002e17 ⸗ DOUBLE OBLIQUE HYPHEN
002e1a ⸚ HYPHEN WITH DIAERESIS
0030a0 ゠ KATAKANA-HIRAGANA DOUBLE HYPHEN
00fe63 ﹣ SMALL HYPHEN-MINUS
00ff0d － FULLWIDTH HYPHEN-MINUS
0e002d TAG HYPHEN-MINUS
002012 ‒ FIGURE DASH
002013 – EN DASH
<Multi_key> <minus> <minus> <period>
002014 — EM DASH
<Multi_key> <minus> <minus> <minus>
(and 38 more)
> > 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.
I do, but I use fixed-width fonts only in mail and automatically delete
HTML alternatives from people I know to add nothing in HTML and just
waste bandwidth. What for crying out load is the added value of having
only your signature in Comic Sans??? (Yes, really)
IMHO rendering variable width fonts in an email client is a no-go for
*ME*. A complete waste of time. What if someone uses a different
version of the same font? Even the version of the font may vary from
Windows to Linux to MacOSX to - god forbid - the printers native font.
PDF was invented to prevent presentational issues with fonts and
graphics, but I have seen numerous PDF's where the document "assumes"
the default fonts to be present (Courier and Times New Roman, however
unacceptable ugly they might be, are considered to be always present on
every device that displays PDF. Their representation however is far
from standard.
> Interesting, thanks for sharing all this with us!
>
> I'm afraid Claws Mail's text editor isn't meant to be a rich text editor
+1
> (that's why we allow using an external editor, if one dares) :-),
On a regular basis, but NOT for the reasons above, but for the features
of the editor. E-mail is seldom meant to write space-aligned tables :)
> but a simple text editor with wrapping and quotes folding. Wrapping is
> not bug-free or flaw-free, and I doubt developers will implement rich
> text features like spacing pondering, even non-breakable spacing (which
> will require to allow seeing control characters, and we're back to the
> simple vs rich text editing thing). Of course I'm only speaking in my
> name!
It is relatively easy to write an Action (a plugin is much harder). The
Action can be a filter that reflows the text to your liking. If it will
show the same on the receivers device however is something I very much
doubt. Plain text for the win!
> Regards,
--
H.Merijn Brand http://tux.nl Perl Monger http://amsterdam.pm.org/
using perl5.00307 .. 5.21 porting perl5 on HP-UX, AIX, and openSUSE
http://mirrors.develooper.com/hpux/ http://www.test-smoke.org/
http://qa.perl.org http://www.goldmark.org/jeff/stupid-disclaimers/
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 490 bytes
Desc: OpenPGP digital signature
URL: <http://lists.claws-mail.org/pipermail/users/attachments/20141028/717136ce/attachment.sig>
More information about the Users
mailing list