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“I just chose words carefully”

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31–40 of 363 posts

Re: “I just chose words carefully”

#32

BITD I used Protext word processor on Atari ST (and later DOS/Windows PC) which automatically justified monospace text. It also had a pretty good dictionary (all in 512KB of RAM) and I remember doing this word dance to get lines to flow better. Manual: https://www.atarimania.com/st/files/protext_5_04_arnor.pdf Screenshot of manual section: https://jumpshare.com/share/jOnMu7M36AOEWyoL0QDl

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Re: “I just chose words carefully”

#33
My dad told a story of a classmate in high school going through the effort of manually justifying text in a paper he wrote and being rewarded with a plagiarism accusation.

That was done by typing the whole paper twice, with added spaces the second time.

Re: “I just chose words carefully”

#36
> At the same time, who among us didn’t nod in recognition at least, having once spent hours massaging a button UI string or a tooltip just to get it to fit under the certain width in a densely packed interface?

I did, and then I got a customer email about how they were using a display-zoom OS accessibility feature and things were truncated on their device. :')

See also: localizing your interface to German

Re: “I just chose words carefully”

#37

I wonder if at any point during writing, the heroic author of that Super Metroid guide learned that "missiles" are not spent "missles", and decided to own the mistake rather than reword the entire guide. Also, the font used for the monospace examples in the post is a great kick to the nostalgia. Which one is it? It reminds me of https://int10h.org/oldschool-pc-fonts/fontlist/font?ibm_vga_...

> learned that "missiles" are not spent "missles"

I choose to believe that the author was channeling the spirit of Noah Webster as a deliberate champion of phonetic spelling reform.

Re: “I just chose words carefully”

#39

I wonder if at any point during writing, the heroic author of that Super Metroid guide learned that "missiles" are not spent "missles", and decided to own the mistake rather than reword the entire guide. Also, the font used for the monospace examples in the post is a great kick to the nostalgia. Which one is it? It reminds me of https://int10h.org/oldschool-pc-fonts/fontlist/font?ibm_vga_...

I think you meant "spelt" rather than spent. A but ironic, all things considered.

Re: “I just chose words carefully”

#40
post #36

> At the same time, who among us didn’t nod in recognition at least, having once spent hours massaging a button UI string or a tooltip just to get it to fit under the certain width in a densely packed interface? I did, and then I got a customer email about how they were using a display-zoom OS accessibility feature and things were truncated on their device. :') See also: localizing your interface to German

Yep, any concern about text widows and orphans in modern app layouts becomes irrelevant as soon as you have to localize.

Just build your layout so it can squash/stretch appropriately.

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