I think you might be misunderstanding. The semantic line breaks described here are not shown to readers. They are visible only to the person writing/editing the text, as a tool for their own use. If you aren't someone who finds a tool like this useful for your own writing, then no worries! Nobody has been harmed by this existing but not being used. It has no effect on the result.

While I never knew there was a name for this, I naturally do something very similar when writing, keeping thoughts separated by at least a line or two, even if I imagine they'll be in the same paragraph in the end result, just so I have a visual sense of where my different thoughts are and how long they are.

▲ necovek 5 days ago | parent | next [-]

GP brought the point up that addresses this: "why deprive readers of extra clarity offered by this formatting?"

So if this is something that's valuable when reading or editing material, why not extend that to the final, rendered output?

To me, this smells of micro-optimization that's not well thought through: where are the boundaries between being able to edit vs being able to read? If we make every word be on a line by itself, you can use remove-line command in your editor, and diffs will automatically become word-diffs, and it would encourage writers to limit sentences to clearer sentences by fitting them into one ~50 line/word screen. By using double newlines, you can still keep "semantic" newlines too. Wouldn't that be appealing? "No" is what I would say.

▲ pests 5 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I’ve always done similar. My initial writing is a disconnected jumble of sentence parts, sentences, more fleshed out paragraphs, etc just to get ideas out and they later get organized into something cohesive.

▲ eviks 5 days ago | parent | prev [-]

> are not shown to readers.

Sure they are, though the spec hides some readers behind other names like "editors, and other collaborators"

But also, have you never read the plain text / source of some markdown/other markup language written by someone else? Readme.md in its raw form?

And the spec explicitly applies to plain text, so it's self-contradictory as "the final rendered output" of plain text is... itself.

▲ tolerance 5 days ago | parent [-]

I like your extension of the term “readers” but I don’t think that’s the intended use for this matter. And if it were, would it be safe to assume that editors and other collaborators would consent to this standard?

> But also, have you never read the plain text / source of some markdown/other markup language written by someone else? Readme.md in its raw form?

That’s beside the point because the spec states "A semantic line break must not alter the final rendered output of the document.”

And I think you’re misinterpreting what “plain text” refers to here. Not .txt files exclusively, but the markup languages mentioned as well that are...plain text. The final rendered output of these kind of documents are not themselves.

The expectation is that the source of whatever flavor of plain text is not the final output.

If this practice offends you, don’t use it. This is a specification suggesting a practice for you* to use.

How have you been able to manage with hard-wrapped text elsewhere?

▲ eviks 5 days ago | parent [-]

> And if it were, would it be safe to assume that editors and other collaborators would consent to this standard?

Easy no, only some of them in some instances. There is no uniformity at such a scale / variety of collaboration.

> That’s beside the point because the spec states

It's not, and I've addressed this in the very next semantic line! And you've also ignored the very point in your quoted line as well. Editing "Readme.md in its raw form" with the extra line breaks is still bad regardless of the final rendered output.

> Not .txt files exclusively

I don't need exclusivity, complementarity still works. And again, final output doesn't save you

> If this practice offends you, don’t use it.

If the criticism offends you, practice in the shadows and don't publish the raw misformatted specs/docs!

> How have you been able to manage with hard-wrapped text elsewhere?

Sometimes by batch-replacing those extra newlines in a text editor, sometiems by abandoning reading because the text reflow is too broken, sometimes just by plowing through while cursing the cavemen that force their habits onto the readers with different devices.

▲ tolerance 5 days ago | parent [-]

    Your aversion appears  
    to be psychological.  
    
    It seems to me like   
    you have trouble examining  
    things by the sum of  
    their parts and  
    semantic line breaks  
    agitate this.
        
    You’re free to  
    the render “misformatted”  
    text in the format that it’s  
    intended to be viewed.

    And I take it that
    physical literature  
    is a burden for you  
    to bear.
    
    My condolences.

▲

necovek 5 days ago | parent [-]

I imagine this type of formatting caused you to sneak in a typo or two like "free to the render" — if you had it as a free-flowing sentence, it'd be easier to catch.

The point is that if these formatting snippets are useful for reading, we should extend this to all the readers too. If they are not, we should be mindful not to micro-optimize lest we confuse others and ourselves.

▲

afc 5 days ago | parent | next [-]

I actually I'm somewhat torn on this.

In my blog, I do this in my poems, such as: https://alejo.ch/39l — I don't expect this to be controversial, makes sense for poems, right?

However, I'm also experimenting with rendering my prose with the same type of breaks, like https://alejo.ch/3gb or https://alejo.ch/3g9

My guess, reading this thread, is that most people would tell me that they find the breaks annoying and would rather read my prose without the breaks? Hmm. Would love to hear some feedback.

▲

necovek 4 days ago | parent | next [-]

It's pretty annoying on a phone screen where there are additional line breaks: I actually lose the flow when I need to skip lines.

Maybe it'll be better on a larger screen, but due to more frequent line breaks, I would advise you to use a serif font.

▲

tolerance 5 days ago | parent | prev [-]

I’m clearly biased. But I enjoyed the format and it's risk like this that make me more likely to read the content where under different circumstance I may not even care about your professional experiences. The smaller font size mitigates any issues due to the line breaks because I can still see all the text.

Although I can get how someone else would feel that the text is too small and if the size was a conscious decision on your part to accommodate the line breaks they would hold you to blame further.

I think you’ve got a nice personal website overall. Even down to the drafts that lead to 404 errors; a nice touch even if unintentional.

Everybody wants personality to return to the Web again until they’ve got to deal with personalities.

You win some, you lose some.

	▲	afc 3 days ago \| parent [-]
		Thank you for responding to my request for feedback, I appreciate it.

▲

tolerance 5 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Welp. You caught me. And I appreciate your point.

I still might batch process all my notes to break at words up to 72 characters anyway! But I’ll be mindful to where safety goggles and proofread before grinding axes in public.

And I’m leaving the typo above in situ so as not to mislead you that I’m less prone to error under normal circumstances. I’m a WIP.

	▲	necovek 5 days ago \| parent [-]
		Not at all my point to "catch" you, just to demonstrate that some of the claimed benefits are not really there. We all make typos regardless of the editing format: for some cases it might be better to go with these "semantic line breaks", for others not so much. While an interesting thought experiment, it should be obvious that claims are not objectively true. Perhaps a full-on scientific study is in order? :)