From: Peter Kirk (peterkirk@qaya.org)
Date: Wed Mar 31 2004 - 07:10:45 EST
On 30/03/2004 18:01, fantasai wrote:
> Ernest Cline wrote:
>
>>
>> The main usage is with compound words such as "ice cream" or
>> "Louis XIV" or commercial phrases such as "Camry SE" where for
>> esthetic reasons an author would prefer that the space not expand
>> upon justification,
>
>
> Given wide enough measures, good text layout program should be able
> to produce justified text without very noticeable changes in word
> spacing.
>
>> NBSP doesn't break, but should it justify?
>
>
> I believe NBSP should be, to the reader, indistinguishable from a
> regular space. It does not have a semantic function as a compound-
> word-joiner; it's just a space that doesn't break, and therefore
> should be treated like any other space.
>
> ~fantasai
>
So perhaps the best thing to do in cases like Ernest's and mine, where a
fixed width non-breaking space is required, is to use FIGURE SPACE,
which I understand is non-breaking. But then perhaps this is too wide in
some circumstances - in many fonts it is twice the regular width of SPACE.
-- Peter Kirk peter@qaya.org (personal) peterkirk@qaya.org (work) http://www.qaya.org/
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