Collapsing white space would break Portrait With Wolf, as well as some status screens in my current works in progress. There will always need to be an easy way to override this behavior.
My experience after 5 years of making things with Inform is that authors need more, not less, control over layout.
EDIT:
for comparison's sake
>sp
[ENTITY: OEW]
You have gathered the following ineffectual primeoid magics:
APHOSIS | DESCRIPTION | GRAMMAR | GLYPH
-----------------------------------------------------------
NIHTSEAH | detect aphosis | SEE | A
FLEGECORS | insect curse | PLAGUE | P
HYLFEOLL | mountainfall | ROCKFALL | R
SLYMFEOLL | slimefall | SLIME | SL
[/ENTITY: OEW]
vs
>sp
[ENTITY: OEW]
You have gathered the following ineffectual primeoid magics:
APHOSIS | DESCRIPTION | GRAMMAR | GLYPH
-----------------------------------------------------------
NIHTSEAH | detect aphosis | SEE | A
FLEGECORS | insect curse | PLAGUE | P
HYLFEOLL | mountainfall | ROCKFALL | R
SLYMFEOLL | slimefall | SLIME | SL
[/ENTITY: OEW]