Package: ttf-bitstream-vera
Version: 1.10-8.2
The character U+00A0 NO-BREAK SPACE (unbreakable space) is wider than
U+0020 SPACE (normal space) in fonts Bitstream Vera Sans and Bitstream
Vera Serif.
This is evidenced by running, say:
LC_ALL=C.UTF-8 pango-view --font="Bitstream Vera Serif 80" -q -t "$(perl -CSD
-e 'print "x\x{020}x\x{0a0}x"')" -o test.png
which uses pango-view to create a test image displaying three 'x'
characters, the first two separated by a normal space and the latter
two by an unbreakable space. The latter two are more widely spaced
than the former.
I believe this to be a mistake: unbreakable spaces are often used
(e.g., in Web pages) simply to indicate a space that should not allow
a line wrap: this should be visually indistinguishable to the user
from a normal space. Having the two be of different width means that
many Web pages or other displayed text will appear irregularly spaced
(and that's sufficiently annoying that I noticed and tracked down the
culprit font).
I don't know who is responsible for this or how it can be fixed, so
I'm bug-reporting to Debian.
--
David A. Madore
( http://www.madore.org/~david/ )
