joe paragraph reformat now inserts extra spaces
| Affects | Status | Importance | Assigned to | Milestone | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| joe (Ubuntu) |
New
|
Undecided
|
Unassigned | ||
Bug Description
This is joe 3.7-1 on jaunty. (The form here won't accept that.)
Using the paragraph reformat command (^B if using the jstar command set for joe), joe now inserts two spaces after periods, even if originally entered as one space. It never did that before; it simply wrapped the paragraph. Years ago it was appropriate style to double space at the end of sentences when using a typewriter. However it is no long standard style in the age of word processing (and never has been in publishing). Joe, by doing it after every period, is not doing it consistently only at the end of sentences - which is bad style in any era.
I can't find so far if this is a local configuration option, or hard coded into joe. In someone's mind it's "a feature not a bug" I'm sure. Way back in '83 PerfectWriter used to have the same annoying "feature." It was bad then. It still is.
| Whit Blauvelt (whit-launchpad) wrote | #1 |
| affects: | ubuntu → joe (Ubuntu) |
Doing more research, evidently this was a "feature" in prior versions that wasn't at least in some cases actually working - might be why I never saw the behavior before. It can be disabled in the pertinent rc file (e.g. /etc/joe/jstarrc) by entering under "Default local options"
-french
over at the left margin. Somehow single spacing between sentences is considered to be "French." I've tested and this does make the "feature" go away. I'd suggest this be added to the defaults in the various rc files in the package.