Quote:
Originally Posted by eschwartz
Actually, you do need a glyph for spaces.  Although I believe they can all reference the same blank glyph? |
I meant, it doesn't need a shape, not one pixel or line. All it needs to print is the width. So I would hope that any Unicode font at least would have all these space "glyphs" by default, as they don't require any design, just one width which is probably just the normal space width multiplied by a standard factor.
But I guess my hope is in vain.
Quote:
Originally Posted by eschwartz
If the space is not recorded in the font, how does the software know it's a space?
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The software should know it's a space without reference to the font.
If you edit a font and put a glyph in a space slot, the result can be poor. The software will break lines at this character, for instance, expecting it to be a space between words.
I use an old DTP app that writes to postscript, which I have studied as I occasionally modify it to get some effect.
When doing kerned and justified text it outputs one character, then a number to advance before the next. So any spaces are elastic.
I know epub layout doesn't give us that control, but it demonstrates one simple way arbitrary spaces can be created whether they're in the font file or not.