- From: Greg Noel <GregNoel@users.sourceforge.net>
- Date: Mon, 4 Sep 2006 17:13:51 -0700
- To: Peter Kerr <p.kerr@auckland.ac.nz>
- Cc: Amaya <www-amaya@w3.org>
On Sep 4, 2006, at 3:23 PM, Peter Kerr wrote:
> drifting OT ;-)
Oh, surely not! {;-}
> I never used hot lead, but I understand that the space-space
> convention came from many years bad habits on mechanical
> typewriters which could not insert a "true" em-space.
I don't know that I'd call it a bad habit; it does make it easier to
read and the bottom line of writing is about communication, so
anything that makes that better isn't bad.
> Some computer proportional fonts have added trailing space in the
> "period" character, to eliminate the need for two ASCII spaces at
> the end of a sentence.
But then that isn't correct either for a decimal in the middle of a
number, which should have the same spacing on each side, or for a
mark indicating an abbreviation ("Mr.", "Dr.", "Prof.", or even
"Wm."), which should be followed by an en-space, not an em-space.
> Now that we have a unicode em-space, and browsers that recognise it
> (and behave accordingly ;-) content providers who wish to use an em-
> space, should insert   or   or at least their editor eg.
> Amaya should optionally do it for them. ...
But do browsers recognize it and "behave accordingly"? A quick test
with Firefox indicates that it gets the width right, but the height
wrong (a line with an em-space is taller than surrounding lines with
no em-space); moreover, it doesn't wrap the line at such a space.
Until such support is present and universal, I suggest that nbsp-
space is the best tack.
Hope this helps,
-- Greg Noel, retired UNIX guru
Received on Tuesday, 5 September 2006 00:14:02 UTC