From: John Cowan (cowan@ccil.org)
Date: Mon Mar 29 2004 - 09:56:13 EST
Peter Kirk scripsit:
> Using NBSP rather than SPACE has several advantages, and has long been
> specified in Unicode, although not widely implemented. It is less likely
> to occur accidentally. But it has disadvantages, especially that it will
> always be a spacing character, whereas for display of isolated Indic
> vowels no extra spacing is required.
You don't actually say so, but you give me the impression that you think
NBSP is a fixed-width space. It isn't; it can assume any width greater
than zero, just as SPACE can; in particular, when used before a NSM, I
would expect it to have the same width as the NSM.
> I would like to repeat my earlier proposal for a new character ISOLATED
> COMBINING MARK BASE. This character would have no glyph, and the general
> properties of a letter. Its spacing would be just as much as required
> for proper display of the combining mark - which would be zero for
> combining marks which have their own width.
Except for not being letters, SP and NBSP have, or ought to have,
exactly this behavior.
-- "Well, I'm back." --Sam John Cowan <jcowan@reutershealth.com>
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