2014-03-29 13:01, Asmus Freytag wrote:
On managing some types of spacing between elements in running text:
On 3/27/2014 8:04 AM, Jukka K. Korpela wrote:
[…]
The “fixed-width spaces” are mostly just legacy characters, holdover
from old typography. They may have their uses, though, in contexts
where they work and other spacing methods don’t (for example, I
recently noticed that they seem to be the only way to create a little
spacing between an inline equation and normal character in MS Word).
They are useful when the object is to create fixed offsets between
elements in running text.
In special cases, I would say. Normally, other tools are used. E.g.,
typesetting programs may have commands with, say, “thin space” in their
name, but they don’t really insert THIN SPACE characters but some
internal representation, and the effect (width of spacing) may be
settable in the program, possibly with a default that differs from the
description “a fifth of an em (or sometimes a sixth)”.
Unless these elements have a special nature
that is widely recognized, there usually isn't any styling or markup
available to create the same effect.
For example, in HTML or XML, you can wrap either of the two elements in
an inline element and set padding-right or padding-left on it. While
this may look clumsier than using,   or   or THIN SPACE
itself, it’s much more flexible—you can set any amount of spacing.
Besides, quite often one of the elements is already an element in the
markup, as in <i>f</i>(0), to take a typical example of a construct that
really needs special spacing.
In word processors, you would typically select a character and set
spacing on it in Font settings. This is clumsy, but using styles, it is
reasonably manageable.
On the other hand, tuning of spacing is rather rare outside professional
and ambitious typesetting. It’s really one of the things that
distinguishes quality typesetting. Typesetters that do such things might
be quite unaware of fixed-width spaces as characters (and might even
regard it as odd to call spacing things characters).
It's the fact that indentation and justification do not need specific
width for spaces that lead to the (incorrect) statement, oft repeated,
that they are not needed in digital typography -- which is nonsense, of
course, but unfortunately, by now, well-entrenched nonsense.
I would rather say that the problem is in not understanding the
importance of spacing, at a more refined level than just SPACE versus no
space. When the problem has been understood, the solution is usually
something else than fixed-width spaces.
Yucca
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