From: Language Analysis Systems, Inc. Unicode list reader (Unicode-mail@las-inc.com)
Date: Wed Mar 31 2004 - 11:49:04 EST
>So perhaps the best thing to do in cases like Ernest's and mine, where
a
>fixed width non-breaking space is required, is to use FIGURE SPACE,
>which I understand is non-breaking. But then perhaps this is too wide
in
>some circumstances - in many fonts it is twice the regular width of
SPACE.
Going out on a limb here...
It sorta seems like the need to keep phrases like "Louis XIV" together
is a valid one the deserves a solution, but it also seems fairly
esoteric-- typesetters and people who give a lot of thought to the
presentation of their text might use this, but most people wouldn't.
This makes me wonder if it's a plain-text thing.
I'm not saying this is a problem that should be solved through markup,
but if you care enough about the presentation of the text to care about
this, you're probably also already using styled text to specify other
things you care about, such as the font you're using. And if you know
what font you're using, you can use THREE-PER-EM SPACE or FOUR-PER-EM
SPACE (or maybe SIX-PER-EM SPACE or FIGURE SPACE), because you know
which one is the right width in your font.
For that matter, if a typical space is usually either a third or an em
or a quarter of an em wide, my guess is you could probably use either
THREE-PER-EM SPACE or FOUR-PER-EM SPACE anyway, and even if this didn't
exactly match the width of a space in the particular font used to render
your text, it'd probably still look okay. But then again, I'm not a
typographer.
Fading back into the background...
--Rich Gillam
Language Analysis Systems, Inc.
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