This is quote possibly the most beautiful blog I have ever seen.
That said, it's a stupid argument. If you want to two-space, fine, but be aware that most people believe and understand you're living in the typographic stone age alongside people who indent their paragraphs and use Whitesmiths.
Two-spacing is a result of monospace typewriters, which couldn't provide the "space and a half" spacing that traditional typesetting put between sentences, however these days most of the people I see doing two-spacing are in their forties or older, and probably used a typewriter before they used a computer.
Even when using a monospace font, I prefer single spacing. Why? It's easier to be consistent. If I forget to two space, or have a typo and miss a two-space, short of creating a really nasty regex I'm not going to be able to find it.
You rebut the author by reiterating arguments he already addressed in his post ("most people don't like it", "only typewriters need it", plus a consistency point he didn't address). Do you feel his rebuttals to those arguments were insufficient? What do you think of the concrete benefit he suggested of two-spacing in vim?
That's easy: how you write your prose or your code should not be dictated by the limitations of your tools. Tools are tools and must satisfy their user's needs. That's the whole point of a tool. If a tool doesn't satisfy your needs and you can't modify it you must find another one.
It's going to be hard if you are emotionally attached to that tool, though.
I'm in my 20s and have never touched a type writer. I use the two space method almost exclusively because that's what I was taught. Sure I mess it up sometimes, but this article does make a fantastic case for why to use it for parsing. If I do mess it up that will show in my parsing, and I'll be able to go back and fix the spacing in the future.
Did you even read the whole article? He directly addressed your first reason. The second reason is weak IMO. What if you forget a period? What if you forget a space between words? If you double space, forgetting it is a typo just like any other typo.
> If you want to two-space, fine, but be aware that most people believe and understand you're living in the typographic stone age alongside people who indent their paragraphs and use Whitesmiths.
Is there really any reason to disparage people who don't agree with you? Just accept it as a personal preference or something done because that's how people were taught and move on. Not everything needs to be a "but I'm right" thing.
why is it stupid? it seems quite coherent: he's using monospace in the editor and wants the clarity; the processing for presentation strips it out so it's not present where it's not needed. that seems reasonable, consistent, and sensible.
The heading showing up dynamically in the margin as I scroll I found to be quite distracting while reading. Text fading in and out while you scroll and read only serves to compete for your attention.
I actually do like the marginalia, like in Tufte's books, side boxes as a sort of commentary or summary of the main text. I'd prefer them to always be there. Lets face it, on a widescreen monitor of modest resolution, the page looks thin otherwise.
This is what happens in Chrome on Windows 7. Its rendering of remote fonts is horrible, and the Chrome team should be ashamed of themselves. @font-face is incredibly common now and Chrome on Windows just ruins many very well-done designs.
Thanks for the heads-up. A quick google later and I see it's a common issue. It even seems to be unstable when I zoom in/out, whereas some levels of zoom are sometimes at least readable but bringing it back to the default zoom will show a different rendering than initially. Very odd indeed.
I've tried fiddling with the Cleartype settings but it doesn't seem to help.
Same here. As far as I was able to discern with some research, it has to do with the rendering engine that Chrome uses - I think GDI+ instead of DirectDraw, or perhaps vice-versa, whereas Firefox and IE use the better one, and IIRC Safari has its own.
Well, his floaty text on the left of the column is a fixed distance from the left margin, so it overlaps the column unless i make the window fullscreen.
That said, it's a stupid argument. If you want to two-space, fine, but be aware that most people believe and understand you're living in the typographic stone age alongside people who indent their paragraphs and use Whitesmiths.
Two-spacing is a result of monospace typewriters, which couldn't provide the "space and a half" spacing that traditional typesetting put between sentences, however these days most of the people I see doing two-spacing are in their forties or older, and probably used a typewriter before they used a computer.
Even when using a monospace font, I prefer single spacing. Why? It's easier to be consistent. If I forget to two space, or have a typo and miss a two-space, short of creating a really nasty regex I'm not going to be able to find it.