I posted something. Then I noticed that it was formatted wrong! I went back to fix it in edit mode. It seemed fine in edit mode. I saved it again. It was still wrong.

The thing that was wrong: In source / edit, my sentences are separated with the charcters “period space space”. This is a typing standard that improves legibility, which is extra important in effortposts. However, in the displayed mode, one of every double space had been eaten! Every post, every comment, mangled! Sentences are separated with “period space” instead of “period space space” and the text is slightly less legible for it. I noticed it for questionmark space space and exclamationmark space space as well. There’s some secret life form eating spaces.

Testing behavior: Period Space: Sentence 1. Sentence 2.

Period Space Space: Sentence 1. Sentence 2.

Period Space Space Space: Sentence 1. Sentence 2.

Yep, saw it in preview, all the spaces are getting eaten. This is a crime against good style. I won’t go so far as to say this is a hate crime against anyone who struggles with reading and visual processing… yet. But the site is editing my comment in order to enforce an objectively worse typographical standard (period singlespace). Literally 19 84. yeonmi-park on Communist Bear Site they automatically censor out your punctuation marks in order to make your writing conform to a worse standard, calling double spaces a bourgeois decadent waste of space.

Please help

(Also, should this go in /c/technology or in /c/hexbear? It’s about both)

(Should I be submitting this as a bug report on github instead?)

  • communism@lemmy.mlEnglish
    12·
    11 days ago

    This isn’t a bug. It’s a feature of the way browsers render HTML (and possibly whatever Lemmy is using to render Markdown is automatically stripping extra spaces anyway). It means that you can format Markdown/HTML however you like (e.g. inserting line breaks in the middle of paragraphs that will be rendered as spaces, or indenting HTML to be more readable to you) whilst it’s still user-friendly when rendered.

    You could use   if you want things to appear double-spaced.

    • CommunistCuddlefish [she/her]@hexbear.netOPEnglish
      3·
      11 days ago

      Thanks!  I’ll probably just let it censor me, because typing &nbsp after every sentence would mess up my muscle memory, and it seems many people hate it for the way they process text.  Well, maybe I’ll try just this one time.  I see there’s quite the tradeoff; it looks better in preview mode but so much worse in composition mode.  This is perhaps the worst of both worlds!  Ah, the true nature of compromise, that everyone should lose.

      • communism@lemmy.mlEnglish
        3·
        11 days ago

        You could use some kind of keyboard macro to replace <space><space> with &nbsp;&nbsp; if it’s important to you.

        Imo someone who wants to see two spaces after each sentence can easily make a userscript or browser add-on that does that. People will be fine reading your posts as-is.