[scribus] Removing extra spaces??

[Gregory Pittman]

On 11/08/2014 06:31 AM, Chris Bannister wrote:
> On Wed, Nov 05, 2014 at 11:03:04PM -0800, Joe Zeff wrote:
>> On 11/05/2014 10:22 PM, Peter Nermander wrote:
>>> That's en easy one: replace each <space><space> with <space>. Repeat until
>>> no replacement is done.
>>
>> Some of us still believe that the period at the end of a sentence needs to
>> be followed by two spaces, not one.
> 
> Wasn't that just because of fixed width fonts? I believe that practice
> today is archaic and unnecessary. 
> 
> That was from an interesting book that I read, "The Mac is not a typewriter"
> 
My sense from reading various sources is that things like this were
conventions that individual publishers would establish. One such
convention was following a sentence with an em space, so we're
traditionally talking about proportional fonts as printing typically
used. It was the advent of typewriters that translated this em space to
two monospaces.

As often happens, conventions morph into rules, and I suppose you might
say that a convention at a particular publisher was in essence a rule,
except that over the years conventions are changed.

I think one would have difficulty showing that having a single space
after a sentence makes for any problem with reading. If we consider
typographical gray, double spaces can introduce some unpleasant white
spots dotted through your text, or even lead to rivers. We're reading
web pages all the time, where double spaces don't exist.

At the same time, with all the wide variety and quality of fonts in
existence, I can imagine that there may be some fonts for which a little
extra space might be desirable for appearance's sake and legibility. But
remember, we want to show off Scribus's typographic capabilities*, so
why not use an em space instead of two regular spaces? This is a job a
script could easily accomplish.

Greg

* And we also want to continue, if not resurrect the artful tradition of
typography.