Re[2]: Fixed Width Spaces (was: Printing and Displaying DependentVowels)

From: Alexander Savenkov (savenkov@xmlhack.ru)
Date: Fri Apr 02 2004 - 14:24:35 EST

  • Next message: Alexander Savenkov: "Re[2]: Fixed Width Spaces (was: Printing and Displaying DependentVowels)"

    Hello,

    and sorry for the late response.

    2004-04-01T05:41:02+03:00 fantasai <fantasai.lists@inkedblade.net> wrote:

    >>>> But, as Ken has just clarified, with NBSP Louis' neck may be
    >>>> stretched rather uncomfortably, if not cut completely. Here is what I
    >>>> don't want to see (fixed width font required):
    >>>>
    >>>> Louis XVI was
    >>>> guillotined in
    >>>> 1793.
    >>>
    >>> This, however, is a matter of presentation rather than semantics, and
    >>> as such fitly belongs in the realm of presentational markup. In HTML,
    >>> one might specify <tt>&nbsp;</tt> to generate a fixed-width space.
    >>
    >> I disagree. Surely there is something SEMANTICALLY different about the
    >> space in "Louis XVI". One semantic difference is that it is
    >> non-breaking. But another one is that these words should not be split
    >> apart. An additional semantic distinction might be that they should be
    >> treated as one word for the purposes of word breaking algorithms.

    > non-breaking and non-stretching are presentational properties, not
    > semantic ones. They don't change the meaning of the space: it's still
    > just a space, not a hyphen or the letter "g". They don't affect
    > non-visual media; we don't break lines in spoken speech. "Louis XVI"
    > is semantically different from "Louis' head" because the former is a
    > bare noun whereas the latter is a noun phrase, but as far as the reader
    > is concerned, they're both separated with "a space". Whether the space
    > breaks or not or stretches or not has no effect on either the meaning
    > or correctness of the text. It only affects its (visual) aesthetic
    > quality.

    That is arguable. An aural user agent could pronounce "1, 2, 3" a bit
    different from "1, 2, 3" if there is a (say) thin space between the
    digits in the latter case. It could pronounce it quicker, for example.

    Alexander. 

    -- 
  Alexander Savenkov                            http://www.xmlhack.ru/
  savenkov@xmlhack.ru             http://www.xmlhack.ru/authors/croll/

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