RE: Difference between EM QUAD and EM SPACE

From: Asmus Freytag (asmusf@ix.netcom.com)
Date: Tue Jul 11 2000 - 01:27:52 EDT


At 02:25 PM 7/10/00 -0800, Jonathan Coxhead wrote:
> In TeX, the difference is that an EM QUAD (\qquad) and an EN QUAD
>(\quad) provide spaces that are legitimate breakpoints for lines within a
>paragraph; while EM SPACE, EN SPACE (\enspace) and THIN SPACE (\thinspace)
>produce horizontal space that cannot cause a line-break.
>
> My assumption on reading the Unicode standard was that this was the
>intention---though it is not spelled out anywhere. Maybe a clarification
>would be worthwhile. If so, the fact that TeX is so widely implemented and
>used---at least within the arena of technical documents---might make it
>worthwhile to preserve those characteristics.

If that's indeed the case, we would be stuck now, since we can't change the
canonical mappings....

A./



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