Re: CSS3 Text and UAX14

> Also, I think UAX14 should allow wrapping within space sequences
> generally: it can be useful in some editing contexts to wrap spaces
> that don't fit so that the author is aware of them and can delete
> excess spaces if necessary. If they disappear off the end of the
> line, then it's hard to notice that they're there.

The only time I've seen this sort of technique used in anger, 
admittedly with TAB, rather than space, is by naive word processor
users who don't understand how to use hard line breaks.  It's a
variation on the quite common technique of using empty paragraphs to
force a page break (where I would use "keep together", "needs n lines",
or hard page break, depending on capabilities and context).

As such, I don't think it is desirable to wrap in sequences of spaces
as it encourages, non-reflowable, WYSIWYG hacks.  If one needs to see
the spaces for editting, the editors should do what word processing
editors typically do and visualise the spaces (e.g. with a light centre
dot in English language word processors).

(Note that naive word processor users are not unintelligent ones.  All
the examples are from people with good degrees.)

Received on Wednesday, 21 February 2007 08:06:55 UTC