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Re: Zero Width Space (was Re: How to print a literal '.' as the first ch
From: |
Deri |
Subject: |
Re: Zero Width Space (was Re: How to print a literal '.' as the first character in a line?) |
Date: |
Sun, 05 Jun 2022 01:31:31 +0100 |
On Saturday, 4 June 2022 22:44:10 BST Dave Kemper wrote:
> On 6/4/22, James K. Lowden <jklowden@schemamania.org> wrote:
> > A "zero width space" is perfectly clear terminology.
>
> Not to anyone familiar with Unicode's U+200B ZERO WIDTH SPACE, which
> doesn't correspond to groff's \& but to its \: (which groff currently
> calls the "non-printing break point"). And regardless of who can
> claim the longer history, Unicode terminology is in much wider use
> today than CSTR#54 terminology.
I think all users will know what a space is, then we have all different width
of spaces, 1/6 of an
em, 1/12th an em, size of a digit, and also a zero width space. People who know
nothing about
Unicode or CSTR#54 will know about spaces, and whilst a zero space may not
initially seem
useful, I bet the Romans wished they had one.
There are several escapes where the input (the escape) results in a movement in
the current
position rather than a mark on the page. \& is just a movement of zero. There
are other escapes
which could be called "non-printing input break" since they can achieve the
equivalent,
consider:-
echo "\\Z''.sp" | nroff
You should see the text ".sp". Any escape with zero movement acts in this way,
it is not special to
\&. The difference is that \& is the shortest escape which causes no movement,
so is useful for
this purpose, but it is essentially a space which has no width.
Cheers
Deri
- Re: Zero Width Space (was Re: How to print a literal '.' as the first character in a line?), James K. Lowden, 2022/06/04
- Re: Zero Width Space (was Re: How to print a literal '.' as the first character in a line?), G. Branden Robinson, 2022/06/04
- Re: Zero Width Space (was Re: How to print a literal '.' as the first character in a line?), Dave Kemper, 2022/06/04
- Re: Zero Width Space (was Re: How to print a literal '.' as the first character in a line?),
Deri <=
- Re: Zero Width Space (was Re: How to print a literal '.' as the first character in a line?), Dave Kemper, 2022/06/05
- Re: Zero-Width Space., Ralph Corderoy, 2022/06/05
- Re: Zero Width Space (was Re: How to print a literal '.' as the first character in a line?), Richard Morse, 2022/06/05
- Re: Zero Width Space, Ingo Schwarze, 2022/06/05
- Re: Zero Width Space, Ralph Corderoy, 2022/06/05
- Re: Zero Width Space, Alejandro Colomar, 2022/06/05
- Re: Zero Width Space, Alejandro Colomar, 2022/06/05
- Re: Zero Width Space, Ingo Schwarze, 2022/06/05
- Re: Zero Width Space, DJ Chase, 2022/06/05
- Re: Zero Width Space, Ingo Schwarze, 2022/06/06