From: "Richard XXXXXXXXXXX" <XXX@XXXXXXXXXXX.com>
To: <john@webword.com>
Subject: Re: http://www.webword.com/reports/period.html


I was pointed to your site by a friend and wanted to point out some issues
that I don't see addressed.

If ASCII had separate characters for period and decimal point, this
wouldn't be an issue - there'd arguably be more spacing after a period and
less after a decimal point.

Have you had any luck in the intervening time following up on Keith
Rayner's study?  Even without the study, it might be simple enough to ask
whether additional spacing was found to HELP or HINDER readability.

Regarding ""rivers" of blank spots" - this only occurs in "fully justified"
 type.  This type of spacing is rarely encountered on web pages.

Travis Wall doesn't "get it" - "designers" should be making PDFs if the
fonts and layout are important.  HTML was originally about structure, not
layout, although presentation-specific tags (and stylesheets) have been 
introduced through the years.  On many (most?) web pages, the "designers" 
don't even specify a font, so the pages are still readable on a PalmPilot 
or cell phone.  PDF is all about presentation.

It would be really handy to have four GIFs or PNGs demonstrating monospaced
 and proportionally spaced with both one space and two spaces after the 
period.  Indeed, the "next level" would be to have four copies of your web 
page - monospaced one space, monospaced two space, proportional one space, 
proportional two space.  Then people could empirically decide what looks 
good.

Oh, and what about question marks and exclamation marks?  Is the rule 
different for them? :)  And I won't even get into colons - controversial 
in monospacing!  :)

And then there's e-mail - both monospaced and proportional font mail 
readers are well-represented in popularity.  And Usenet News, where 
monospaced is arguably more entrenched than proportional.

Thanks for the feedback opportunity.  I'm hopeful that, of the above 
issues, you'll find at least one item "new".