Re: What about  ?

Arnoud "Galactus" Engelfriet wrote:
>Then how do we define ™? I don't see anything wrong with thinking
>up new entities, as long as you unambigously define which entity it
>should be.

™ is the UCS-4 character ™ or a reasonable representation of it.   
is  . The other special space characters are also defined UCS-4 characters.

>Yes, but is there a *reason* for   not to get collapsed, like the
>normal space? 

There are reasons, and this is why so many implementations - HTML and others - treat
NBSP the way they do. The main reason is the logic that NBSP is treated just like 
any other graphic character -- it does not make much sense to invest in special
logic for a feature that was included for compatibility and the use of which is 
discouraged. Another reason is that this is what many authors expect.

>In my opinion, (as well as the HTML 3 draft's), the
>non-breaking space is simply a space where the line should not be
>broken. If it occurs at a location away from the line end, it should
>be treated as a normal space, including the collapsing.

This is a valid view when one ignores the installed base and common practice.
I'm not saying it isn't logical, only that both views are logical and in this case
we should stick to the coomonly practiced view.

Jonathan Rosenne

Received on Thursday, 1 August 1996 06:35:54 UTC