Re: What about  ?

In article <Pine.LNX.3.93.960801145202.449B-100000@crystal.clare.cam.ac.uk>,
James Aylett <sja20@hermes.cam.ac.uk> wrote:
> On Wed, 31 Jul 1996, Arnoud Galactus Engelfriet wrote:
> 
> > Yes, but is there a *reason* for &nbsp; 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

Ah, but isn't that what we have style sheets for? Embedding rendering
information in an HTML document is a Bad Thing, if only for the fact
that you have to edit all your documents if you decide to get a slightly
bigger border line.

I consider using &nbsp;s to force this a kludge. You can't even control
the amount of spacing you get - one em space, an en space, 10 pixels...

> flexible support for them, and there is no particular reason why &nbsp;
> _should_ collapse - its intended use is only defined for single
> occurences, where it inserts space. This is very distinct from being

Eh? I thought it was defined as "connects two non-whitespace sequences
in such a way the line will not be broken between the two." This doesn't
say anything about collapsing in either way, but as it's a _space_
it should be collapsed, IMO.

Does the W3C have an opinion on this matter? Why was the statement about
the non-breaking space (defined as collapsing) inserted in HTML 3, but
does Wilbur stay very quiet about it?

Galactus

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Received on Thursday, 1 August 1996 16:30:50 UTC