This is definitely overloading NBSP with a non-standard meaning. The
principal function of this character is to prevent word break at the end
of lines. If you have used NBSP to do your special sorting, where you
cut and paste such fields into body text, you will get incorrect line
breaks.
Secondly, this assumes that the data you have was entered in by someone
who carefully put NBSP in every position where s/he wanted the
intervening space to be ignored. This is not a trivial matter,
especially with legacy data.
Mark
@Unicode.ORG wrote:
>
> At 11:00 -0500 1997-02-07, Alain LaBont/e'/ wrote:
>
> >Now TC37, NISO (ANSI), perhaps the European prenorm (I'm not sure any more)
> >and a few Scandinavian standards do sort space as a distinct *letter*...
>
> The European prenorm does this. The Irish prenorm does this too.
>
> >To
> >me and to Canadian standard CAN/CSA Z243.4.1 (and to French and English [and
> >many others'] dictionaries), that is a mistake... To separate family names
> >from firts names, one should use different fields, not spaces...
>
> Doesn't this refer to a database application? One also sorts words when
> making dictionaries, etc. One doesn't only sort family names. You and I
> perceive your name differently: I think your family name is made of two
> words, "La" and "Bonti" (except that you write it as one word, "LaBonti"
> (and we all remember why)). I cannot imagine an application in which "van"
> and "den" and "Beld" could, as they are all normal Dutch words, be sorted
> as anything but three separate words; and if Mr van den Beld needs to have
> his name treated as one object, he should bind it together with a NBSP.
>
> You advocate exactly the reverse:
>
> >However in
> >Canadian standard CAN/CSA Z243.4.1, for those who really mean it, they can
> >use NBSP which is a special space which has a weight coming before A... We
> >do not recommend it thgough, but as it is difficult to enter, it is there
> >for those who want to make the effort and really mean it!
>
> Option-Spacebar? Alt-Spacebar? How hard is that?
>
> So that is why we have the toggle. :-)
>
> --
> Michael Everson, Everson Gunn Teoranta
> 15 Port Chaeimhghein Mochtarach; Baile Atha Cliath 2; Iire (Ireland)
> Guthain: +353 1 478-2597, +353 1 283-9396
> http://www.indigo.ie/egt
> 27 Pairc an Fhiithlinn; Baile an Bhsthair; Co. Atha Cliath; Iire
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