Follow-up Comment #1, bug #65710 (group groff): [comment #0 original submission:] > an input U+00A0...: is it a fixed-width non-breakable space, or a > variable-width non-breakable space? Unicode does not distinguish.
Unicode intentionally provides some latitude to rendering engines to make the best typographical decisions they can. That is, Unicode is not really a driving factor here; the only Unicode requirement of U+00A0 is that it be nonbreaking, and both "\ " and "\~" meet that requirement. Since 2003 ([http://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/groff.git/commit/?id=48615a44 commit 48615a44]), groff_char(7) has said "the ISO Latin-1 no-break space is mapped to `\~', the stretchable space character." While this claim was erroneous until bug #58962 addressed it (and remains erroneous with certain fonts, per bug #65693), it has always been the most typographically sound solution. I think groff should strive to do by default what makes most typographic sense, and (as #58962 argued) there are few if any situations where "\ " is preferable to "\~". > This is analogous to how we don't know whether a man page > author means a hyphen or a minus sign when they type `-`. Weakly analogous: * Hyphens and minus signs are different semantically. The two types of nonbreaking spaces are different only presentationally. * Hyphens and minus signs must copy to the clipboard as different characters; both types of nonbreaking spaces will possibly copy as U+00A0, though more probably (and more usefully to the user in most cases) copy as an ordinary space. > 2. Add an option instructing preconv which escape sequence to > transform U+00A0 into. I don't oppose an option to _override_ the default escape preconv uses, but its current default is sound. (Still, I would question the need for such an option, since users can always specify either escape directly in the source, and preconv won't touch it.) _______________________________________________________ Reply to this item at: <https://savannah.gnu.org/bugs/?65710> _______________________________________________ Message sent via Savannah https://savannah.gnu.org/
