🚀 go-pugleaf

Age Speaks: Back before electronic word processors and desktop publishing software there were typewriters. Law offices were large consumers of pre-numbered forms that they could put into a typewriter and type a legal document onto; these forms saved lots of "go back" time otherwise required to manually add the line numbering. (Later cute little numbered strips were used in conjunction with one of those expensive space-age photocopier things to make copies that had the line numbers alongside the content, but that's a story for another day...)

The key point here is that *line numbering drove the vertical spacing*, not the other way around.

In a case of form follows function, I believe you'll today see that *all* line-numbered documents are regularly spaced on the vertical axis. Why? Because content is shaped to fit into numbered lines, not the other way around. Get it?

As such, I suppose one could look for software that line numbered irregularly spaced paragraphs, but why bother? The sorts of documents that require line numbering, or more accurately the sorts of organizations that require line-numbered documents, will almost certainly not be impressed by irregularly spaced content in the first place.

But they *will* require the content to be sequentially line-numbered, no matter what sort of tool -- damp clay tablet and stylus, typewriter, Etch-a-Sketch(tm), or Electronic Wurd Processor -- was used to prepare said content. Or regardless of the submitter's philosophical views about the merits of line numbering.

It's been fun, but I'm outa' here...