Re: Tastes great! Less filling!
Adam M. Costello (amc@cs.wustl.edu)
Fri, 2 Aug 1996 21:57:39 GMT
Date: Fri, 2 Aug 1996 21:57:39 GMT
From: amc@cs.wustl.edu (Adam M. Costello)
Message-Id: <9608022157.AA28933@siesta.cs.wustl.edu>
To: www-html@w3.org
Subject: Re: Tastes great! Less filling!
"Lee Daniel Crocker" <lcrocker@calweb.com> says:
> To sum up, there are two ways to look at
>
> 1. It's just like the letter "G", but using no ink.
> 2. It's just like a space, except you can't break a line there.
All the things fitting description 1 that I've ever heard of have been
called "quad space", "em space", "en space", "thick space", or "thin
space".
If authors use "non-breaking space" in the manner it was intended to be
used--to suppress line breaks--then they won't care whether description
1 or 2 applies. If I type 2 Aug 1996 do I really care whether
there is a fixed predefined width for those spaces? Not likely. So
it's no tragedy if browsers don't all agree. Description 2 should
probably be acknowledged as better, but the simpler implementation
allowed by description 1 should be considered sufficient.
When authors want to space things out, they should use something else,
like   or   (as soon as such things are supported).
AMC