From: Jim Allan (jallan@smrtytrek.com)
Date: Tue Jul 08 2003 - 09:55:16 EDT
Tex Texin posted on use of U+2007 FIGURE SPACE for digit-grouping space:
> Right. I was only thinking that if U+202F wasn't available it might be a
> better choice than NBSP.
I checked some common fonts which confirmed what I believed, that digits
are normally equal in width to the lowercase letter _n_ or very close
and that a normal space (and non-breaking space) is half that width.
Accordingly U+00A0 (very, very rarely not available in a font) seems a
better choice than U+202F.
U+202F as a digit-grouping space would be double the width of a normal
word-division space, separating the parts of a single number more than
words are separated, equal to sentence division if one is double spacing
following a sentence.
Of course in justified text both normal space and non-breaking space
usually expand in width to enable line-filling and might so the
digit-grouping space might sometimes expand to a width greater than the
digit-width in that font.
But even in such a case the digit-grouping spaces would still not be
greater in width than word breaking spaces in the same line.
U+202F which is always a wide space would be generally less desireable
than ordinary non-breaking U+00A0.
Jim Allan
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