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Comment by fsckboy | Hacker News Reader

I heard about this issue back in the 80's talking to a friend doing an early WYSIWYG word processor development project. Typeset, proportional spaced, yes, same spacing between sentences and words, and if you eyeball typeset books from the precomputer era, that's what you will see.

I also looked it up in Chicago Manual of Style, and one thing I remember is, you want to get your hands on an earlier edition (for geek fun) because they have much more detail about typesetting than they do in later editions. (I don't know what the edition sweetspot is but I found a 1930's copy and I liked it)

>mostly amused that Guido van Rossum...wanted web browsers to collapse multiple spaces to a single space...Python...treats whitespace as significant.

this is actually pretty funny, thank you

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I learned to type on typewriters in the late 70s. I was thrown in a typing class in high-school and I thought to myself "this is a useless class, I'm NEVER going to ever need this". Turns out it was one of the best things I learned in high-school.

Anyway, I never used double spaces after periods. My typing teacher would always give me grief for it, but for whatever reason, I just never did it. As you can see, I still don't.

> As you can see, I still don't.

I don't think we can. Or can we?

The period at the end of this sentence is followed by six spaces. I bet we won't be able to see them.

I see them and they’re glorious.

I was going to say I don't see it but then I opened inspect tool and sure enough it is all there.

    <span class="commtext c00">The period at the end of this sentence is followed by six spaces.      I bet we won't be able to see them.</span>

I used only the finest artisanal spaces.

I was thrown in a typing class in high-school and I thought to myself "this is a useless class, I'm NEVER going to ever need this".

Interesting, given that I specifically sought out typing class in high school in the late '70s because I was confident that there was going to be a lot of keyboard usage in my future, might as well learn to use it.

And I don't want to hear whinging about subtle mechanical keyboard differences. When you learn at an under-funded rural school with manual typewriters, you also learn to appreciate anything that isn't making your fingers do mechanical printing. :-)

I still type too hard on keyboards because I learned to type on a poorly maintained mechanical typewriter.

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