Re: Error detail/hint style fixup

Daniel Gustafsson <daniel(at)yesql(dot)se> writes:
> [ errdetail_hint_style_v2.patch ]

I started going through this in more detail, and I see that a significant
chunk of the changes are to put two spaces not one between sentences in
errdetail/errhint messages. This is per our style guideline:

Detail and hint messages: Use complete sentences, and end each with
a period. Capitalize the first word of sentences. Put two spaces after
the period if another sentence follows (for English text; might be
inappropriate in other languages).

but I wonder if maybe the right answer is to drop the last sentence of
that style guideline. It seems a bit at odds with the general principle
enunciated under Formatting: "Don't put any specific assumptions about
formatting into the message texts". There are those who consider it
obsolete style, too, eg

http://www.thedailymash.co.uk/news/society/last-human-to-use-two-spaces-after-a-full-stop-dies-20180312145785

Personally I do type two spaces, which is a habit I learned while using
TeX (where it made a difference), but that was a long time ago.

A quick grep through one of the backend .po files suggests that about
two-thirds of our messages where the issue arises have one space rather
than two (I counted about 35 instances of one space, 15 of two). If
we did want to standardize this fully, we'd have to hit more places
than you did here.

In short, I'm not sure it's worth thrashing a lot of our translatable
strings to enforce a debatable style detail.

Thoughts?

regards, tom lane