https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=41652
--- Comment #10 from Simo Kaupinmäki <isoku...@gmail.com> ---
(In reply to comment #9)
> I can direct you to the orthographic German "Duden" (following DIN 5008
> for letter-writing): With office documents and e-mails use a space after
> abbreviation dots (z. B., u. a. m.), but not in dates (05.07.06); in word
> processing use a small fixed-width space in both abbreviations and dates.
Thank you for the reference. I got hold of a copy of the 2009 edition of
"Duden: die deutsche Rechtschreibung", which defines hard spaces
("Festabstände") as fixed-width, mostly smaller ("meist kleinere") spaces that
prohibit line breaks (the same definition is already included in the 2000
edition and available online:
http://www.egb-buende.de/tools/EDV_Fuehrerschein_NRW/03_Grundlagen_Textverarbeitung/textverarbeitung_duden1.pdf).
So, this definition primarily seems to concern non-breakable _thin_ spaces,
though the modifier "meist" leaves room for some interpretation. Furthermore,
in the context of specific examples (e.g., of the use of the percent sign) it
is repeatedly said that a "smaller space" should be used that is explicitly
described as both hard and protected ("geschützter"; the 2000 edition isn't
quite as explicit on these points). On the other hand, according to the 2009
edition, the official standard DIN 5008 speaks of a full ("ganzer") space,
which apparently needs be neither fixed-width nor non-breakable. My reading of
all this is that almost any space will do, but a non-breakable thin space is
preferred. And this was basically what I was talking about: normally you'd want
either a variable-width space or a _thin_ fixed-width space, not a fixed-width
space that sometimes looks like a normal space and sometimes not.
> They are "tools" for laying out text, not necessarily a way to encode text
> as information - typesetters use such things as double 1/4 quad spaces.
>
> So fixed-width variants of normal space size do have a use (and Unicode
> defines them: U+2002, U+2004, U+2005 etc.). The important point is not that
> the fixed-width space should be distinguishable in all cases, but that it
> should not be extensible with proportional spacing. In good typography such
> spaces should in most cases be smaller than the regular space (as you say).
Now I'm a little confused. Are you talking of the regular no-break space
(U+00A0) or the _narrow_ no-break space (U+202F) here?
What I said was basically that in the ideal case there should hardly be any
distinguishable difference between U+00A0 and a normal space, even if U+00A0
was treated as a fixed-width space. If a fixed-width space is not
distinguishable from a normal space, it does not matter in practice whether it
is of fixed width or not. A different matter is that often U+00A0 is just used
as the poor man's narrow no-break space, relying on it being treated as a
fixed-width space in justified text. I can see the reasoning, but this usage is
not in alignment with the best practices of traditional typography as far as I
can see.
Granted, Unicode defines a set of fixed-width spaces, the majority of which
are, as formulated on the Microsoft page you referred to, characters
corresponding to traditional typographic _space_values_ that have indeed been
applied in manual typesetting. Historically, for each space between words on a
line, an identical space value (typically corresponding to U+2004 or U+2005)
would have been applied. For each space on other lines, a slightly different
value was applicable when necessary to get all the lines justified. After
punctuation, a larger-than-average value would often have been preferred, or in
some special cases, a thin space.
For more details, see paragraphs 239–254 explaining technical terms in the 1st
edition of the Chicago Manual of Style (published in 1906):
http://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/facsimile/CMSfacsimile_terms.pdf
This is the historical background to the Unicode fixed-width spaces, and one
might want to argue that many of these characters are of little practical use
in the age of digital typography. Notably, most of the Unicode fixed-width
spaces are _breakable_ and have no non-breakable counterparts (breakability was
not a concern in manual typesetting, as each line was typeset as a separate
unit). This can be seen as a deficiency in the Unicode character repertoire, or
alternatively perhaps as an implicit stand that the kind of fine adjustment
they were originally intended for should rather rely on different means in
modern typesetting systems. Using the Unicode fixed-width spaces for manual
justifying in digital typesetting would be awkward and anachronistic.
Be that as it may, there is not much LibreOffice can do to change the overall
situation. If a document is first edited in LibreOffice and then opened in
another application (possibly after being exported into a specific format),
U+00A0 will be rendered either as a variable-width space (in Firefox) or as a
fixed-width space (in MS Word). LibreOffice only has control over its own
rendering of the character (and how it will be printed in some non-editable
formats, such as PDF). Additionally, LibreOffice might want offer an easy short
cut to entering U+202F in order to cater for finer typography, but again, there
can be no guarantee that it will be rendered correctly in other applications.
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