- From: James Aylett <sja20@hermes.cam.ac.uk>
- Date: Thu, 1 Aug 1996 14:56:54 +0100 (BST)
- To: Arnoud Galactus Engelfriet <galactus@stack.urc.tue.nl>
- cc: www-html@w3.org
On Wed, 31 Jul 1996, Arnoud Galactus Engelfriet wrote:
> Yes, but is there a *reason* for not to get collapsed, like the
> normal space? 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.
From a purists point of view this might well seem sensible, but consider
that it is useful to have a non-collapsing space entity (for instance, to
provide border lines alongside areas of text, using tables with different
background colours for the cells) - I know that it's bending the construct
away from its intended usage, but unless anyone can come up with a truly
"clean" way of doing it this seems to most utile. Yes, the example above
could easily be done in style sheets, but we don't have widespread or
flexible support for them, and there is no particular reason why
_should_ collapse - its intended use is only defined for single
occurences, where it inserts space. This is very distinct from being
whitespace in the marked-up document, and so it would seem valid to allow
this use.
James
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Received on Thursday, 1 August 1996 09:55:24 UTC