Problems creating "thin space" between nested quotes

[John123]

Originally Posted by cybmole

to my eyes a normal space " ' is fine & it scales /justifies sensibly with all user settings.

Okay. I think we're polarised. So here's my final thought. The problem with your scenario, ie. putting a variable space between " '. I use an iPhone with limited width. It is entirely likely that you will get a couple of words on a line, if that includes nested quotes with a variable space . . . worse still having the quotes breaking over the line, "use & nbsp;" sure. Okay, I'm being nit-picky but where does this end? It is surely a simple thing to have fixed, non-breaking space where required. Which goes back to the original post on this thread.

Here is a more contentious issue. In my opinion, single use ebook reader's, Kindle, etc. will go the way of the Dodo or, at best, have limited sales. The info. phone will, inevitably, take over. Kids are used to reading small screens, so "Why bother with the clutter and expense of having yet another piece of kit?"

[cybmole]

Originally Posted by John123

Here is a more contentious issue. In my opinion, single use ebook reader's, Kindle, etc. will go the way of the Dodo or, at best, have limited sales. The info. phone will, inevitably, take over. Kids are used to reading small screens, so "Why bother with the clutter and expense of having yet another piece of kit?"

no - IMHO - because the phones trend towards miniaturisation, ebooks are trending towards larger screens.

the phone gizmo has to fit in pocket/handbag yet have lots of uses.
the e-reader has to emulate/be better than a paper or hardback book.
a big gripe with most current e-readers is poor pdf display because they simply are not big enough. . I'd love a proper A4 sized e-reader but refuse to pay the extortionate price of a prev. gen Kindle DX..

I am not of the i-thingie generation & the desire to watch hi-def movies etc on a three inch screen baffles me, but I see room in market for different sized devices. I am definitely in the market for an A4 reader with e-ink + long battery life - with colour as a not-essential nice to have. I have stuff like music scores, game strategy guides that just dont work on current e-readers because of size/colour issues.

so telephony & audio goes onto the tiny gizmo, books & video onto the medium sized one....as for video-phoning...dunno, don't much care...

what's unlikely to change, in my generation anyway - is that getting older -> poorer eyesight -> need for larger gadgets.

[John123]

Originally Posted by cybmole

what's unlikely to change, in my generation anyway - is that getting older -> poorer eyesight -> need for larger gadgets.

Agreed! When this "younger" generation gets older they will need something larger.

So what's on the horizon? HUD attached to spectacles with an earpiece or an A3 device attached to a motorized zimmer frame, etc. etc.

Crystal ball, anyone?

Now this quotes gripe . . . nah, forget it

[BangBangO]

Originally Posted by cybmole

ok - so explain to those of us who haven't please. what exactly do you want to see in your e-book - and more importantly - how's it supposed to look as the user cycles thru XS, S, M , L XL font size options on their Sony reader , or toggles normal / condensed on their Kindle .

Can you define "nice" in an environment where the end-user is in control of the display, & you have no control over e.g. number of characters per line.. ..

to my eyes a normal space " ' is fine & it scales /justifies sensibly with all user settings.

In this case (non-breakable thin space), problem is there is a hell lot of languages that use it extensively.

Take French for example.
We must use a non-breakable thin space before double quotation marks (? ! ; : etc.). No space is no option because of readability issues.
We must use a non-breakable thin space for large numbers (1 000 000, 200 000, etc.). Again, readability.
We must use them for phone numbers.
We must use them for asterisks, daggers, etc.
And so on and so forth.

In other words, we are screwed.

And that is not the only problem with HTML entities. Sometimes it feels like it is a standard that has been thought only for English-speaking people. Thus we must agree to achieve typographical disaster since basic things we strongly rely upon can't be properly done. Sad but true.

You may say "we don't care" but French is spoken by 145.6 million people in Europe and it is expected 500 million people will speak it in 2025 (650 million by 2050, which is approximately 7% of the World's population) since it is the second-most studied foreign language in the World, after English.

So, basically, it is not just about nested quotes. It is about taking those people into account as they are using non-breakable thin space everyday.

[cybmole]

c'est la vie

- & why resurrect this thread - it has been dormant for 14 months

sacre blue

[mmat1]

My best solution so far is:

Css:

.space5 { margin-left: 5px }

html:
<p>text "<span class="space5">'</span>Text in Quotes'<span class="space5">"</span> more Text</p>

(Tested with ADE and Acer)

btw: AFAICS Sigil replaces the Entity, but does not change the code of the thinsspace.

(Tested with Tinyhexer)

[BangBangO]

Originally Posted by cybmole

c'est la vie

- & why resurrect this thread - it has been dormant for 14 months

sacre blue

Well, I just think that no matter the (dormant) status of a thread, it is always good to share information, especially cultural information, which is by nature quite difficult to access in other cultures.

That is to say this issue may be quite irrelevant in some culture, but pretty terrible in some other cultures. Thus I guess sharing this may be useful.

I'm the first to say french people are reluctant to adapt their language. And to be honest, I believe the main reason we are unable to do that is a pervasive intellectual arrogance that I just can't bear. You know, we tend to think we are more intelligent than others but don't do anything to prove it. That is why our language is sacred and you can't alter it. If you dare do that, then you open the gates of Hell.
On the contrary, Germany reformed its language a few years ago since they thought they had to modernize and make it more "user-friendly".

Unfortunately, in this particular case, I must admit that I can't even see how we could change our language. We do differently, but we can't do else. As long as non-breakable thin space is not fully supported, we have to provide a damaged reading experience.
A normal non-breakable space is OK, but we can tell there is something strange while reading. It's all about feeling and subconscious awareness. And it is a huge problem when readers set text-alignment to justify ("syntax" may be visually broken in several places).
No space at all is no option, since it means bringing a huge parasite in the reading experience (some tried and readers contacted them to ask why they did it that way — some even said it was so painful it damaged their reading experience). They are not used to it so…
A span is OK in some cases (numbers) but we can't obviously do that for all double quotation marks as it would take hours or days. And I guess publishers are not willing to pay for that.

French ebook developers abide by the ebook rules (readers' freedom to set as they wish) but we are keen on typography as it was meant to facilitate so there is a lot we can do to enhance their reading experience. We are currently trying to find a golden mean. In this process, more and more french ebook developers are considering typographical enhancement something vital. And readers keep their freedom at the same time. But AFAIK, the vast majority tell us they get a better experience (some readers using one specific eReader even thanked a developer for its typographical tunings since the default experience (values set by this eReader's manufacturer) is very bad).
As a matter of fact, more and more readers are actually complaining about ebooks that haven't been optimized typographically.
Thus non-breakable thin space is a huge problem as it is a "process breaker".

We just want to make better ebooks and that's it. For example, some guy whose name I don't remember, developed a methodology to manage rich content (non-fiction). It is pretty simple since it was adapted from something existing but it works very very well and readers seem to agree. As a result, we can offer a better reading experience, which is basically the aim of an ebook designer. And books using this methodology tend to be more beautiful as well. As a consequence, those books get extra-advertizing since people find it of high-quality (visually charming + content is managed quite perfectly).
In fact, sometimes it looks like this guy's job is to find a lot of solutions to help us make better ebooks people love and push publicly.
So yeah, at first it looked like we could do nothing because of "ebook rules and principles" but we are discovering we can do a lot, and that we can do a lot that eventually meet readers' expectations. That is why everything is insanely important (in this case, non breakable thin space).

for your attention. I'll try to be more concise next time.

[Jellby]

I've used lots of non-breaking thin spaces in Les misérables. It works fine in my reader, does it work in others? It should be relatively easy to convert them to something else.

P.S. I've seen much French printed stuff with what I believe is plain incorrect typography: uneven spacing inside quotes (« like this»), line breaks just before a question mark (clearly someone typed a normal space in the word processor), etc. It's always in some "second class" material, though: TV magazines, comic books (not that the comic book is second class, but the printed text parts didn't obviously receive much attention).

[mmat1]

Originally Posted by Jellby

It works fine in my reader, does it work in others?

Acer Lumiread: shows Question-mark
Pocketbook 622: Space is as wide or nearly as wide as a normal space
Sigil: shows little blocks, then it crashes....
ADE: shows Question-mark
Firefox-plugin: Shows a small space

I would like to say &#x202f; is a bit problematic....