I think that this is a bad idea. Default treatment of spacing
after periods should be left up to individual browser developers.
See, there are at least the following three positions on the
"who controls the presentation" issue:
1) the source should not be allowed to control details of
the presentation
2) the source should be able to explicitly override browser
preferences on presentation details
3) presentation defaults should be standardized so that
the source determines the presentation on any browser
Your suggestion is in the spirit of #3. Not only do I (as
both an author and a developer) like #2 better, but I think
it is the only one with the potential of scaling up.
So, getting back to the particular issue, we should let the
browser decide on post-period spacing and perhaps add a
mechanism to HTML+ to stipulate the author's preference.
Jay Weber
EIT