RANT! "Default Spacing After" Paragraph!1!one!

[midwinter]

The default setting for spacing after a paragraph is set to 6 points.

This is annoying. It's arbitrary (why not 12? Why not 112? Why not 8?) Hell, while we're changing defaults, why not set all fonts to be bolded, and if you complain, someone will tell you "Change it in the prefs"!

I know I could change it in the preferences or in the normal template, but
the user should not have to change an unasked-for behavior in order to set it back to the way it should be. When I want something single-spaced, I want it single-spaced throughout the document, not single-spaced throughout the document EXCEPT after paragraph returns, because, MARTIN and his evil minions believe those are special places, and they clearly think that the paragraph indentation just isn't quite enough to indicate that a new paragraph has begun, so they're SUPPLEMENTING a perfectly good paragraph indentation with EXTRA SPACING AFTER THE PARAGRAPH THAT I DIDN'T TELL THE APP TO DO.

GRRR!!! HULK SMASH!!

[greenmorpher]

Wow! Don't let go of that banana, Middy, you might to someone a mischief.

I have the same problem because I prefer to use space before ... I just set up my template with my own set of defaults and everything will be fine forever.

Cheers, Geoff

Geoffrey Heard, Business Writer & Publisher

"Type & Layout: Are you communicating or just making pretty shapes" -- Revealed! The secrets of how you can use type and layout to turbocharge your messages in print. See the book at http://www.worsleypress.com

[midwinter]

Actually, that's a slightly different complaint. You have a non-standard behavior that you want NW to perform. I want NW to stop performing a non-standard behavior by default.

[dshan]

I'm with Banana Boy on this one (aside from the GRRR!!! HULK SMASH!! bit of course), I think spacing before and after paragraphs should be set to 0 by default. It's the first thing I do to New File.dot every time I do a Nisus intstall and it irritates me that I have to keep remembering to do it (perhaps eating more bananas would improve my memory, but I doubt they'd help the irritation).

[greenmorpher]

Always remember, dshan, that monkeys eat lots of bananas and they're not known for their particularly good memories.

Cheers, Geoff

Geoffrey Heard, Business Writer & Publisher

"Type & Layout: Are you communicating or just making pretty shapes" -- Revealed! The secrets of how you can use type and layout to turbocharge your messages in print. See the book at http://www.worsleypress.com

[martin]

Alright everyone, consider the rant a success- we'll change it in the "factory" Nisus New File that ships with the next update of Pro.

[shades]

Wow! Three rants, and the default is changed!

If only I had the wisdom, insight, and power of these three

[midwinter]

Well, I *have* been complaining about this privately to Martin for a long time now.

[shades]

Add persistence to my trio of virtues I need.

[Ryan]

Hey, cool! I've been quietly mumbling about this one for awhile as well.

[greenmorpher]

Hey, what's swith all the fruit? And now they're coming at us in pears!

One thing that concerns me with the space before/after paragraphs is that it seems to disappear on the page pretty much at random.

I'll have a document set up in a style with space before a paragraph, I enter a change and do a return ... and get no space before! This seems to happen mostly when a page break is thereabouts -- not right there, not the paragraph which heads a page -- but nearby.

The display is not quite right still -- I'm still getting little dags over lines from time to time.

Cheers, Geoff

Geoffrey Heard, Business Writer & Publisher

"Type & Layout: Are you communicating or just making pretty shapes" -- Revealed! The secrets of how you can use type and layout to turbocharge your messages in print. See the book at http://www.worsleypress.com