Re: Question about formatting numerals

From: Addison Phillips (addison@yahoo-inc.com)
Date: Thu Sep 21 2006 - 10:08:49 CDT

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    Jukka K. Korpela wrote:
    > On Wed, 20 Sep 2006, Addison Phillips wrote:
    >
    >> Locales that use spaces in digit groups generally use the regular
    >> non-breaking space character (U+00A0).
    >
    > That's what there is in the CLDR data
    > ( http://www.unicode.org/cldr/data/charts/by_type/number.symbol.html )
    > but I'm pretty sure that actual data almost universally contains just
    > normal spaces.

    That's probably not true. User input may be "regular spaces", but I
    think you'll find that computer systems generate non-breaking spaces.

    > Non-breakability and the amount of spacing are handled at
    > the styling and formatting level, if at all. This may slowly change in
    > computer-generated texts, as the utilization of CLDR grows.

    I agree that this is sometimes the case. However, here we are dealing
    with a recommendation to content authors. For a number, using a
    non-breaking space will prevent things like line-breaking from
    interfering with text legibility.

    >
    >> Less common spaces I would avoid: they may not translate well to
    >> legacy encodings or might not have glyphs available in specific fonts.
    >
    > I wouldn't be so worried about conversions to legacy encodings when
    > using Unicode for new data.

    I would, simply because users will wish to utilize text in many places
    that use legacy encodings. It is bad to have your number suddenly and
    inexplicably become "123?445?789".

    Addison 

    -- 
Addison Phillips
Globalization Architect -- Yahoo! Inc.
Internationalization is an architecture.
It is not a feature.

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