Spaced: Back to Earth

["Alex Silbajoris" <alsilba -at- hotmail -dot- com>]

Thanks, all, for your reponses about developers using spaces to wrap and 
format text.  What you said makes sense, and since I wrote about it earlier 
this week, I've been wading through the actual code and occasionally copying 
blocks of screen text.  When I paste it into a document, it's full of 
spaces, which explains some of what I've been seeing.

I know some of the developers don't like to use the show/hide option to 
display tabs, spaces, etc., and when they wrap with spaces they think hey, 
it looks fine.  And yes, some of them use word processors with the minimum 
possible commitment to skillful learning.  (That last point explains a lot 
about the way many people drive; skill requires effort so most people won't 
invest in it.)

As for plain text, I have asked for that in some jobs, and the people think 
I'm crazy.  But it's true that it is far easier to format plain text with 
some ready styles than it is to de-format someone's attempt at styles.

As for educating them, that's an interesting matter.  Our department is 
named "Documentation and Training" so it is our business to train internal 
and external audiences.  I would like to set up some in-house classes in 
Word and Visio, and the admins have made noises about going ahead with it, 
but no one is buying into it yet.  And there is an element of resentment 
among people when they think you're trying to tell them how to do their job.

So for the time being, I'm leaning on the delete button, watching little 
dots march across the screen, and trying not to think of counting sheep.

- A


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