[HN Gopher] Manual: Spaces
___________________________________________________________________
Manual: Spaces
Author : doener
Score : 106 points
Date : 2025-12-09 00:07 UTC (22 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (type.today)
(TXT) w3m dump (type.today)
| doener wrote:
| Via https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46198040
| Smaug123 wrote:
| On the layout side rather than the "what spaces are available"
| side, I really recommend
| https://gwern.net/doc/design/typography/tex/1981-knuth.pdf , the
| paper in which the Knuth-Plass algorithm for paragraph layout is
| defined. (The Knuth-Plass algorithm decides how wide spaces
| should be on each line and which choices of hyphenation out of
| some predefined set should be used to lay out a paragraph.) It's
| super readable and generally quite joyful. Knuth describes TeX as
| a "labor of love", and it shines through that paper.
| bayesnet wrote:
| For those interested in typst, Laurenz wrote[0] about the
| differences between the typst and TeX layout algorithms a while
| ago. The paragraph layout algorithm is the same but the way it
| interacts with page placement is quite different.
|
| [0]: https://laurmaedje.github.io/posts/layout-models/
| WillAdams wrote:
| Yeah, one of the things which I always wished for when doing
| page composition was a way to visualize which paragraphs
| could be set a line or two longer or shorter while still
| being set reasonably nicely.
|
| In decades of typesetting, I've had a chapter fall out almost
| perfectly with nicely pages and appropriately placed figures
| exactly once (fastest 40 minutes of my life) --- for the
| rest, it was:
|
| - style the text and place the figures
|
| - check the last page and see if it would be helped by paging
| tight or loose
|
| - review all the pages and their figure placement to see
| which was the most problematic/egregious --- fix it
|
| - starting at the beginning, adjust paragraph tightness as
| necessary, trying to get pages to balance and if need be,
| figures and references to be placed where the specs call for
| them --- if need be, adjust figure
| size/height/placement/style
|
| - if one reaches the end and the selected strategy did not
| have the desired result, revert back to the initially styled
| and placed version and try the other strategy
|
| - repeat until everything worked and everything panned out
| and all pages are balanced and all references/figure
| placements
| dbuxton wrote:
| One thing I find interesting about discussions of typography in
| Cyrillic is how poor the overall readability of text is in most
| fonts compared to Latin because of the relative scarcity of
| risers and descenders (e.g. pqlt etc)
|
| One of my tutors at university claimed that she was able to read
| 9th century manuscript Cyrillic faster than modern printed books
| because the orthography was more varied and easier to scan/speed-
| read.
|
| (That wasn't something I found to be true)
| Antibabelic wrote:
| I remember seeing some studies that experimentally show this to
| be true for Hebrew (another de/ascender-poor writing system),
| but can't find them at the moment.
| tuetuopay wrote:
| Thanks for the factual explanation! I found the example
| cyrillic texts unreadable as a set of horizontal lines (serif)
| and vertical lines (characters themselves) giving the feeling
| of a grid, but I dimissed it as "I can't read cyrillic
| anyways".
|
| Now that you wrote it down, it does actually makes sense.
| jbverschoor wrote:
| Of all spaces, the space between sentences is discarded because a
| period is whitespace. However, kerning partly removes this.
|
| Perhaps this is why monospaced fonts are so readable? I like
| having double-space between sentences.
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| The space isn't discarded _except_ in monospaced fonts. All the
| main computer layout engines (web browser, word processor) will
| add additional spacing there. It 's also where line-width and
| inter-word padding are corrected first so often ends up being
| at least as big a space as you'd get double-spacing anyway.
|
| Monospace fonts aren't considered generally more readable by
| people who make or work with fonts. Their particular strength
| is in reducing character ambiguity and preserving vertical
| alignment. But "readability" is subjective and depends on
| particulars of the specific font and of course personal
| expectation and preference. I find them almost always less
| readable than a good proportional serif font, except for code.
| layer8 wrote:
| In monospace the dot is wider than in proportional fonts,
| thereby adding more space by itself. In addition, the space
| character itself is wider in monospace than in proportional
| fonts, relative to the average letter width. In combination,
| this balances out the difference from proportional
| typesetting, in my opinion. A dot plus two spaces is
| jarringly wide in monospace.
|
| I do agree that monospace doesn't make for readable prose
| either way.
| lockranore2 wrote:
| I learned to type in Junior High School in the nineties, and it
| is extremely difficult to leave a single space after a period.
| Like that, it took a huge effort for me to break conditioning.
| oneeyedpigeon wrote:
| This was in the US? As someone who didn't learn that rule, I've
| always found it _very_ strange and, frankly, ugly.
|
| From the article:
|
| > There was just one space width available in the typewriter,
| so words and sentences were separated by the same distance. The
| double space was used to differentiate sentences and improve
| the readability of the text.
|
| I would dispute this. Sentences are separated by a period as
| well as a single space character, and that's not the same
| distance as just a single space because the period doesn't have
| the same visual weight as a word character. A ". " still looks
| 'wider' than a " ", even if it technically isn't!
| stronglikedan wrote:
| > I would dispute this.
|
| I wouldn't. Typewriters don't work like computers. The
| additional space was objectively beneficial. I personally
| witnessed that.
| IAmBroom wrote:
| I agree that it oversimplifies.
|
| The extra space produced a visually "extra" pause.
|
| Just as these blank lines produce an even greater separation.
| It's about emphasis, and it's going away (IMO) because it's a
| nicety, not an obligatory part of clarity and communication.
| Also, because early editing software wasn't complex enough to
| correctly distinguish between a sentence end and "Dr. Edward
| Jones". [EDIT: the gd HN editor removed my extra space!!!]
| nticompass wrote:
| Whenever I type, be it on my phone or on a computer, I always
| use double spaces after a period. Like you, I'm just used to it
| and un-learning it is hard!
| levmiseri wrote:
| There is something oddly beautiful in invisible complexity. These
| little tweaks and minuscule details without which the whole would
| suffer in quality.
| ggerules wrote:
| This also makes me think of drumming. There are the sticks that
| hit the surface and form a pattern of sounds. Lots of different
| kinds of spaces embedded there!
| amwet wrote:
| > Standard space, word space, space per se, is the symbol typed
| using the widest key on the keyboard.
|
| What a strange non-fact to include.
| IAmBroom wrote:
| Have you ever had a keyboard where that wasn't true? Even on my
| cellphone...
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2025-12-09 23:01 UTC)