The NBSP issue was extensively discussed a couple of years ago, I don't remember in which list. In short, it was wrongly used by early web users as a fixed width space, and there is such a vast legacy it cannot be changed. However, there are other applications that use the intended meaning - see ISO 8859.
Jony > -----Original Message----- > From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Peter Kirk > Sent: Wednesday, March 31, 2004 10:13 PM > To: Kenneth Whistler > Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Subject: Re: Fixed Width Spaces (was: Printing and Displaying > DependentVowels) > > > On 31/03/2004 11:57, Kenneth Whistler wrote: > > >>... To most people, a space is a space. To rather more, there > >>is a second kind of space which they expect to be > non-breaking and often > >>also expect to be fixed width. (Those who had the latter > expectation > >>have had a nasty surprise today because with the release of > 4.0.1 NBSP > >>is suddenly no longer fixed width.) > >> > >> > > ^^^^^^^^ > > > >Hardly. It has *always* been the intent and understanding of the UTC > >that NBSP was comparable in all ways to a SPACE character, > except for > >disallowing line break opportunities. > > > >... > > > > > > > > > > > Thanks for the clarification. I should say that the behaviour of NBSP > suddenly reverted to what it had been in previous versions of the > standard, although a perhaps inadvertant change was made in 4.0.0. > > Nevertheless, there does seem to be a widespread > misunderstanding that > NBSP is intended to be fixed width, and in many systems it is > implemented as such. Perhaps there is a need to clarify this further, > perhaps by reinstating text similar to what was in Unicode 3.0. > > I take your point about the advantages of having the drafters of the > standard available to explain parts of the standard which are > unclear. I > certainly wish we could do that with other texts that you > allude to. But > there must also be controls here. If the text says "black", we can't > have the drafters saying that the text really means "white". They can > say that they made a mistake, and correct it in a new > version, but there > are limits on how far they can reinterpret even a text which > they wrote > themselves. > > -- > Peter Kirk > [EMAIL PROTECTED] (personal) > [EMAIL PROTECTED] (work) > http://www.qaya.org/ > > > >
