non-breakable expandable space?

From: Stanislav Brabec (sbrabec@suse.cz)
Date: Mon Dec 15 2003 - 09:12:22 EST

  • Next message: Tom Emerson: "Re: [Fwd: Re: Swastika to be banned by Microsoft?]"

    Hallo.

    Typesetting of Czech language has a special rule for single-letter
    prepositions: Space after this letter is not breakable, but if break
    does not occur, it is a subject of expansion (when typesetting justified
    text).

    Ordinarily software uses NBSP, but such text looks ugly, because NBSP
    has fixed width (see lower for example).

    Can anybody say, what is correct for "non-breakable expandable space"?

    NBH + SPACE

    NBH + SPACE + NBH

    WJ + SPACE

    SPACE + WJ

    WJ + SPACE + WJ

    Anything else...

    Or propose new character(s) No Break Variable Width Space (and/or Zero
    Width Expandable Space)?

    Cite:

    UNICODE UAX#14 3 says:
    When expanding or compressing inter-word space, only the space marked by
    U+0020 SPACE and U+3000 IDEOGRAPHIC SPACE are normally subject to
    compression, and only spaces marked by U+0020 SPACE, and occasionally
    spaces marked by U+2009 THIN SPACE are subject to expansion. All other
    space characters have fixed width.

    Reference:

    Issue 9727: Stretchy unbreakable space
    http://www.openoffice.org/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=9727

    Examples:

    For TeX users:
    unexpandable non-break space = \hbox{ }
    expandable non-break space = ~

    Ugly line 2, last space (NBSP) is too narrow:

    Bezne se jako nezlomitelna rozsiritelna mezera pouziva
    Unicode znak <NBSP> (jako treba v tomto
    pripade). Takova mezera je vsak pevna a pri zarovnani do
    bloku pusobi nehezky.

    Nice line 2, last space is OK:

    Bezne se jako nezlomitelna rozsiritelna mezera pouziva
    Unicode znak <NBSP> (jako treba v tomto
    pripade). Takova mezera je vsak pevna a pri zarovnani do
    bloku pusobi nehezky.

    -- 
    Best Regards / S pozdravem,
    Stanislav Brabec
    pracovník vývoje softwaru / software developer
    --
    SuSE CR, s. r. o.                             e-mail: sbrabec@suse.cz
    Drahobejlova 27                               tel: +420 296 542 382
    190 00 Praha 9                                fax: +420 296 542 374
    Czech Republic                                http://www.suse.cz/
    


    This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Mon Dec 15 2003 - 09:49:09 EST