Quote:
Originally Posted by ahi
I assumed that hanzi character paragraphs are supposed to be in a grid, and that different lines of the same paragraph cannot therefore have different amount of spacing between characters.
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I can't say your assumption is wrong. I am wondering what's the scenerio behind your assumption. It's commonly accepted that each glyph is monospaced, but in reality, if you have special purpose or are under restrictions, Chinese readers won't say it's wrong to draw glyphs in non-monospaced fashion. The page layout may be ugly, though.
I checked some paper books on my shelf and found that some are monospaced and some are not. And not monospace-placed layout are definitely more beautiful than non-monospaced ones.
Monospace is the specification used to design font, not the fundation or un-changed rule of Chinese glyphs, although in most circumanstances, it is right.
BTW, to be honest, I still haven't got what you really want.
BTW2, I think you might be interested in a fact:
In ancient times, Chinese text had no punctuation, readers had to distinguish sentences and paragraphs on their own when they were reading. Punctuation were introduced to Chinese text in later times, but I don't know the exact time. I remember that even in Ching dynasty (died 100 years ago), official documents didn't use punctuations. But since I am no historian or language expert, maybe I am wrong.