[xep-support] Support of special types of spaces

[Carlos Villegas]

I agree.

However, some of these typographical spaces had a very specific purpose. 
For example the space between a word and a specific punctuation mark. In 
this case, the font designer has already taken care of it and there 
should be no space at all before punctuation marks. If necessary the 
formatter should use information inside the font such as kerning to 
alter those spaces depending on context.

Nevertherless, high quality typesetting still requires specific spaces 
in certain contexts that are impossible for the formatter to determine 
reliably. For example, those depending on semantics, I can't think of an 
example now but I'm aware that there are cases when reading about 
typography and TeX, for instance. In those cases, human intervention is 
required, in this case in the form of XML tagging. That's why we need 
support in the formatter to specify those spaces using the same terms of 
traditional typography. That's the reason they were included in Unicode 
after all. Notice also that even if space between words is allowed to 
vary we still need some spaces in some cases to remain fixed. For 
example the space in "Fig. 1", a non-breakable space of a specific width 
probably accounted for in high quality typography.

As David said you can get around using fo:leader but as you said also it 
will be more convenient if the formatter handled those spaces directly.

My 2 cents...

Carlos

Broberg, Mats wrote:
> David,
> 
> Not quite true.
> 
> The reason typographic spaces still exist has nothing whatsoever to do
> with the fact that they were once cast in lead. They would have appeared
> in any technology, because fine typesetting requires fixed spaces. And
> they are still there, because users need them. Perhaps not the average
> MS Word users, but typesetters.
> 
> Using entities is a detour for the typesetter and the standard should
> offer the typesetter to enter fixed spaces as any other type of
> character. One of the very ideas with a new technology is that it should
> exceed the level of precision or quality as the one it supersedes - and
> it should do that faster and easier. Not the opposite.
> 
> Best regards,
> Mats Broberg
> Technical Documentation Manager
> 
> www.flirthermography.com
> 
> 
> 
> 
>>-----Original Message-----
>>From: owner-xep-support at renderx.com 
>>[mailto:owner-xep-support at renderx.com] On Behalf Of David Tolpin
>>Sent: den 19 oktober 2005 10:21
>>To: xep-support at renderx.com
>>Subject: Re: [xep-support] Support of special types of spaces
> 
> 
>>The only reason typographic spaces exist is that they were 
>>cast in lead. It's legacy, it results in poor typography, and 
>>creates problems which are hard to resolve (typographically, 
>>not programmatically). For good typography, define entities 
>>of appropriate names and map them to space-filled leaders of 
>>appropriate lengths -- and use them for truly good typography.
>>
>>David
> 
> 
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