How is NBH (U0083) Implemented?

The Unicode character NBH (No Break Here: U0083) is understood as a hidden
character that is used to keep two adjoining visual characters from being
separated in operations such as word wrapping. It seems to be similar to ZWJ
(Zero Width nonJoiner: U200C) in that it can prevent automatic formation of
a ligature as programmed in a font. However, it seems to me that an NBH
evokes a question mark (?) Is this an oversight by implementers or am I
making wrong assumptions?

There is also the NBSP (No-break Space: U00A0), which I think has to be
mapped to the space character in fonts, that glues two letters together by a
space. If you do not want a space between two letters and also want to
prevent glyph substitutions to happen, then NBH seems to be the correct
character to use.

NBH is more appropriate for use within ISO-8859-1 characters than ZWNJ,
because the latter is double-byte. Programs that handle SBCS well ought to
be afforded the use of NBH as it is a SBCS character. Or, am I completely
mistaken here?

Thank you.
Received on Mon Aug 01 2011 - 13:45:24 CDT