[webkit-dev] Should editable webkit accept option space to insert non-breaking space?

[Rob Burns]

On Feb 19, 2007, at 11:30 PM, Maciej Stachowiak wrote:

>
> On Feb 19, 2007, at 9:04 PM, Dan Wood wrote:
>
>> Running blot, it appears that editable divs in webkit treat option- 
>> space as a regular space, not as a non-breaking space.  I can't  
>> believe this could have been neglected, so maybe it's not a bug?
>>
>> Personally, I'd like to be able to insert non-breaking spaces,  
>> since it would mirror other text fields.
>>
>> Any thoughts?  Should I file a bug?
>
> I think the reason this is done is because we use a sequence of  
> alternating normal spaces and non-breaking spaces, plus some  
> special WebKit-specific CSS properties, to achieve desired  
> whitespace behavior. We want multiple spaces to show up in the  
> middle of a line, but collapse away at the end, as in normal text  
> editors.
>
> In WebKit-based clients, like Safari or Mail, we can get the  
> display to be just right, using a special CSS property. In other  
> clients, we want decent fallback. The closest you can get is  
> alternating space / nbsp, which preserves the multiple spaces but  
> will break in the middle if needed.
>
> An alternate design for this that still allowed entering true non- 
> breaking spaces would be welcome - we could not figure out how last  
> time we thought about this.


Perhaps I'm not understanding this correctly, but the alternating of  
non-breaking spaces with spaces should not prevent the deliberate  
insertion of a non-breaking space. If a user is actually hodling down  
the option key while typing space, the editor should insert a non- 
breaking space. While this could create rendering problems, that  
would just be the result of a user intentionally putting in too many  
non-breaking space. The user would be aware of what caused the  
problem. It's often necessary to deliberate use non-breaking spaces.  
The Cocoa text system allows this. For example, if I'm trying to  
prevent a runt at the end of paragraph I might want to type <option>- 
<space> before the final word of a paragraph.

The alternating space non-break-space prevents the usual HTML/XML  
treatment of whitespace by collapsing multiple consecutive spaces  
into one space. Again, nothing should prevent WebKit from allowing  
users to intentionally insert a non-break-space.

Best wishes,
Rob