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RunningBum · 10-19-2011, 09:29 PM

I type in a post with the standard 2 spaces after a period, but then I look at it after submitting the post, and there's only a single period. It looks like it's happening to everyone. As a test, I'll put in 4 spaces after this sentence. Are there 4 spaces before this one?

It looks like the software is removing extra spaces, but 2 spaces between sentences is standard, not 1. I think 1 makes a longer paragraph a lot less readable. Can this be fixed?

I'm using Firefox 7.0.1 on Windows7.

ERD50 · 10-19-2011, 09:52 PM

TESTING:

Sentence of stuff followed by period and two spaces. Then the next sentence, followed by period and 'enter'.

Sentence of stuff followed by period and one spaces. Then the next sentence, followed by period and 'enter', and I left 'spaces' plural for the same char count.

Sentence of stuff followed by period and six spaces. Then the next sentence, followed by period and 'enter'.

Will post, then look. Preview says yes, it takes them out for me too. I do seem to recall this now. Odd behavior.

-ERD50

Animorph · 10-19-2011, 09:57 PM

I had the same problem trying to format a table. Looked great in preview, then all my extra spaces removed in the final post.

ERD50 · 10-19-2011, 10:12 PM

wwwww
lllll

wwwww
lllll

Animorph - the whole issue of posting data (which we do a lot of) would be soooooo much simpler if they undid this ridiculous yanking out of multiple spaces. Above, I chose courier new as the font in the second case, which is mono-spaced, so columns will line up, and you can easily pad them with spaces. The "Code" icon will keep the spaces, but that has other side effects. One work-around is to use chars other than spaces as the 'fillers', but not so good for sentence endings.

Why would the programmers decide to do this? It isn't a common practice at all. Very odd. But they also skip all sorts of things from searches, and don;t tell you that either.

-ERD50

GregLee · 10-19-2011, 10:53 PM

Usually the editing software thinks it gets to decide how all white space is treated. It decides what things are separated by being in different paragraphs, different sentences, or different words, then it formats those for display completely ignoring blank spaces that you typed in (except for what clues they may give about where words, sentences, or paragraphs are supposed to begin and end). Separating sentences with two blanks instead of just one ought to be doable, if we could agree that would be more readable, depending on the accessibility of the editing software that does the dirty work. (And I don't know how accessible it is, or to whom.)

But really, let me suggest, the problem is that there is only one standard width blank space to work with. That's a matter of computer convention that has just grown up with no good reason. Printers have many different spacings as they typeset which they can use to separate words or sentences, and generally they will use an amount between sentences that is intermediate between the inter-word spacing and double that. That's what we're used to seeing in print. But we can't do that on a computer screen, because we have just that single blank character to work with.

The computer fonts we use are proportional, with differing widths for different characters, so there is really no reason (except inertia) why we should not have several sorts of blanks, with varying widths, to correspond to the traditional typesetters' thin shims of lead used to produce white spaces of varying width. It would make text on a computer screen more beautiful, and it would also make it easier to do right justification.

winger · 10-19-2011, 11:00 PM

I had read about this a few days ago on the net. It seems we are old-timers.

REWahoo · 10-20-2011, 03:42 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Animorph

I had the same problem trying to format a table. Looked great in preview, then all my extra spaces removed in the final post.

This may help: http://www.early-retirement.org/foru...ool-43750.html

Sarah in SC · 10-20-2011, 07:13 AM

I have had a keen interest in the one space or two debate that winger referenced, as I learned to type on a typewriter (old fart) and thus put 2 spaces between sentences. The youngsters, okay anyone under 40, learned the 1 space that is the convention now. I'll never get the hang of it, I suspect.

As for your other table issues, I'll defer to REW. I only post pictures.

REWahoo · 10-20-2011, 07:24 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sarah in SC

I have had a keen interest in the one space or two debate that winger referenced, as I learned to type on a typewriter (old fart) and thus put 2 spaces between sentences. The youngsters, okay anyone under 40, learned the 1 space that is the convention now. I'll never get the hang of it, I suspect.

There is another alternative, one practiced by at least one long-term forum member . I'm using the same technique in this post . You still have two spaces between sentences, one before and after the punctuation mark . I confess it isn't my punctuation preference ! But if Sarah is an "OF" and I've got a kid her age, I suppose that makes me an "AOF" . That might explain my reluctance to accept change . . .

GalaxyBoy · 10-20-2011, 07:43 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by RunningBum

I type in a post with the standard 2 spaces after a period, but then I look at it after submitting the post, and there's only a single period. It looks like it's happening to everyone. As a test, I'll put in 4 spaces after this sentence. Are there 4 spaces before this one?

Using the ER Forum app on iPhone I see the spaces just as you typed them. Which is just how I learned to type on a manual typewriter and how I will type until the day I die.

kombat · 10-20-2011, 07:51 AM

FYI, it's probably not the forum software stripping out extra spaces. It's part of the HTML standard. Browsers are required to ignore extra spaces and do their own formatting. There are, of course ways around this, such as the use of the "code" tag, as already noted. I'm just saying, don't blame the forum software. Even if it dutifully left in 100 space characters after the period at the end of this sentence, your browser would be required to squish it all down to a single space. Blame the WWW Consortium.

ERD50 · 10-20-2011, 08:09 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by kombat

FYI, it's probably not the forum software stripping out extra spaces. It's part of the HTML standard. Browsers are required to ignore extra spaces and do their own formatting. There are, of course ways around this, such as the use of the "code" tag, as already noted. I'm just saying, don't blame the forum software. Even if it dutifully left in 100 space characters after the period at the end of this sentence, your browser would be required to squish it all down to a single space. Blame the WWW Consortium.

Quote:

Originally Posted by kombat

FYI, it's probably not the forum software stripping out extra spaces. It's part of the HTML standard. Browsers are required to ignore extra spaces and do their own formatting. There are, of course ways around this, such as the use of the "code" tag, as already noted. I'm just saying, don't blame the forum software. Even if it dutifully left in 100 space characters after the period at the end of this sentence, your browser would be required to squish it all down to a single space. Blame the WWW Consortium.

I'm no www/html expert, but that doesn't sound right to me based on experience with other forums.

As a test, I created a document in LibreOffice with different spaces, exported it as html, and when my browser read the file in, all the spaces were preserved as typed.

Maybe that author meant 'the html code in the text window'. It just doesn't sound right to me that any standard would strip extra spaces. No other program we use does that.

-ERD50

RunningBum · 10-20-2011, 08:20 AM

I thought this was the only place I noticed single spaces, but I just looked at another board I post at and see the same thing. I didn't realize that single spacing was being taught now. I thought it was some ER-specific setting, but it probably isn't. I'll live with it, though I would prefer it to leave spaces as I type them without having to jump through hoops.

Sarah in SC · 10-20-2011, 08:25 AM

Other places on the web take my extra space away, too. Not just the meanies here at ER-org.

I will endeavor to persevere, though, and just let it go.

ERD50 · 10-20-2011, 08:28 AM

Hmmm, so I looked at the SOURCE of this page, and my post #2 SOURCE has the spaces retained as I typed them. So they are not stripped out by the software, but the browser is stripping them out, but I don't think this happens in every site.

I'm guessing that the er.org source code needs something in the source header that is generated to tell my browser to preserve spaces? Can I over-ride that, or do we need er.org to make the change to how they create the pages? It sure would make formatting posts much, much easier (the code & table tags have drawbacks).

-ERD50

GregLee · 10-20-2011, 09:04 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by kombat

FYI, it's probably not the forum software stripping out extra spaces.. It's part of the HTML standard.. Browsers are required to ignore extra spaces and do their own formatting.. There are, of course ways around this, such as the use of the "code" tag, as already noted.. I'm just saying, don't blame the forum software.. Even if it dutifully left in 100 space characters after the period at the end of this sentence, your browser would be required to squish it all down to a single space.. Blame the WWW Consortium.

Here's another way around it.. Notice the extra space after sentences in the above quoted passage.

Texas Proud · 10-20-2011, 09:19 AM

You can always add extra periods.....

Sarah in SC · 10-20-2011, 09:40 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Texas Proud

You can always add extra periods.....

But no women would recommend that option, and I doubt that few men would, either.

Achiever51 · 10-20-2011, 09:48 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sarah in SC

But no women would recommend that option, and I doubt that few men would, either.

Bahahahahaha!
And put me down as another oldie who learned how to type on a MANUAL typewriter. I will never adjust to the one space after a period...muscle memory is permanently fused to add a double space on every device I use.