&ensp in a monospaced font

[Andy Fish]

Hi,

I am trying to output some html in monospaced font, and I want spaces to
take up the same width as any other character. i thought this would be easy
for monospaced fonts - surely   and   would both be the same
width?

unfortunately not -   is narrower than other characters and   is
wider :-(

so how do i generate a sequence of normal width spaces?

I can't use the <pretag because there is HTML markup in the output - it's
not only plain text

Andy

[tech578]

On Feb 29, 9:38 am, "Andy Fish" <ajf...@blueyon der.co.ukwrote:

Hi,

I am trying to output some html in monospaced font, and I want spaces to
take up the same width as any other character. i thought this would be easy
for monospaced fonts - surely &ensp; and &emsp; would both be the same
width?

unfortunately not - &ensp; is narrower than other characters and &emsp; is
wider :-(

so how do i generate a sequence of normal width spaces?

I can't use the <pretag because there is HTML markup in the output - it's
not only plain text

Andy

maybe &nbsp;

[Toby A Inkster]

Andy Fish wrote:

I can't use the <pretag because there is HTML markup in the output -
it's not only plain text

You can use markup within <pre>.

--
Toby A Inkster BSc (Hons) ARCS
[Geek of HTML/SQL/Perl/PHP/Python/Apache/Linux]
[OS: Linux 2.6.17.14-mm-desktop-9mdvsmp, up 30 days, 22:37.]

Bottled Water
http://tobyinkster.co.uk/blog/2008/02/18/bottled-water/

[Andreas Prilop]

On Fri, 29 Feb 2008, Andy Fish wrote:

I am trying to output some html in monospaced font, and I want spaces to
take up the same width as any other character. i thought this would be easy
for monospaced fonts - surely &ensp; and &emsp; would both be the same
width?

Some things are meaningless in monospaced fonts. Think of all the
characters that have "zero-width" in their names.

unfortunately not - &ensp; is narrower than other characters and &emsp;
is wider :-(

In *which* font?
It is also possible that the browser takes ensp and emsp
from some other font.

--
In memoriam Alan J. Flavell
http://groups.google.com/groups/sear...Alan.J.Flavell

[C A Upsdell]

Andy Fish wrote:

I am trying to output some html in monospaced font, and I want spaces to
take up the same width as any other character. i thought this would be easy
for monospaced fonts - surely &ensp; and &emsp; would both be the same
width?

Why would you think that?

unfortunately not - &ensp; is narrower than other characters and &emsp; is
wider :-(

Of course.

so how do i generate a sequence of normal width spaces?

Something I have done on occasion is user '0' characters where I want
spaces, but with the colour the same as the background, so they look
like spaces.

[Jukka K. Korpela]

Scripsit Andy Fish:

I am trying to output some html in monospaced font,

Do you mean you wish to present HTML markup visibly or audibly on the
page? Then a monospace font would normally be a good idea. I would
suggest using <codemarkup together with a style sheet like
code { font-family: Consolas, "Courier New"; }
to reduce the risk that some poor default monospace font is used.

and I want spaces
to take up the same width as any other character.

A normal space, as well as a no-break space, has the same width as other
characters, when the font is monospace

i thought this
would be easy for monospaced fonts - surely &ensp; and &emsp; would
both be the same width?

What? Why would you use specific-width space characters (which are
poorly supported in fonts) _and_ ask them to have the same width as
other characters? Why would you use them at all?

so how do i generate a sequence of normal width spaces?

By using the SPACE character U+0020 as everyone else.

I can't use the <pretag because there is HTML markup in the output
- it's not only plain text

You have misunderstood the meaning of <pre>, and what else?

The real problem is probably very different from the picture we've got
so far. To avoid wasting more of everyone's time, post the URL.

--
Jukka K. Korpela ("Yucca")
http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/

[Bergamot]

Jukka K. Korpela wrote:

>
suggest using <codemarkup together with a style sheet like
code { font-family: Consolas, "Courier New"; }
to reduce the risk that some poor default monospace font is used.

I suggest font-family:monospac e; and let the user decide whether their
default is "poor". Mine isn't by a long shot.

--
Berg

[dorayme]

In article <Ko************ ********@reader 1.news.saunalah ti.fi>,
"Jukka K. Korpela" <jk******@cs.tu t.fiwrote:

I would
suggest using <codemarkup together with a style sheet like
code { font-family: Consolas, "Courier New"; }
to reduce the risk that some poor default monospace font is used.

Whenever I have tried this, at least on my Mac, the code looks
too faint (setting a font-weight can fix, but this might make
other alternative fonts for code too bold). It is the 'Courier
New' that is the trouble on my machine at least. The default
'Courier' does not do this. Courier looks fine.

--
dorayme

[Toby A Inkster]

C A Upsdell wrote:

Something I have done on occasion is user '0' characters where I want
spaces, but with the colour the same as the background, so they look
like spaces.

That must be fun to copy-paste!

--
Toby A Inkster BSc (Hons) ARCS
[Geek of HTML/SQL/Perl/PHP/Python/Apache/Linux]
[OS: Linux 2.6.17.14-mm-desktop-9mdvsmp, up 31 days, 22:46.]

Bottled Water
http://tobyinkster.co.uk/blog/2008/02/18/bottled-water/

[Toby A Inkster]

dorayme wrote:

Jukka K. Korpela <jk******@cs.tu t.fiwrote:

>I would
suggest using <codemarkup together with a style sheet like code {
font-family: Consolas, "Courier New"; } to reduce the risk that some
poor default monospace font is used.

Whenever I have tried this, at least on my Mac, the code looks too faint
(setting a font-weight can fix, but this might make other alternative
fonts for code too bold). It is the 'Courier New' that is the trouble on
my machine at least. The default 'Courier' does not do this. Courier
looks fine.

Agreed. Courier New is a horrible font -- very lightweight and hard to
read unless there is a lot of contrast between the font colour and
background colour. The serifs are too pronounced and there is very little
visual difference between l/1 and O/0.

Courier is slightly better -- it's a reasonable weight -- but still not
fantastic for reading as it suffers from Courier New's glyph shape
problems.

In my stylesheets, I'm now specifying:

font-family: "Consolas", "Bitstream Vera Sans Mono", "Andale Mono",
"Monaco", "Lucida Console", monospace;

for monospaced fonts. Virtually all Mac OS 9/X machines will have Andale
Mono or Monoco. Windows Vista machines will have Consolas; earlier Windows
will have Andale Mono or Lucida Console. Most Linux machines should have
Bitstream Vera Sans Mono these days.

Each of those fonts are very readable, smart-looking, sans serif mono
fonts. They all have good visual distinction between 0/O and I/l/1 (except
Lucida Console where there is little difference between 0/O) which makes
them very suitable for reading code.

--
Toby A Inkster BSc (Hons) ARCS
[Geek of HTML/SQL/Perl/PHP/Python/Apache/Linux]
[OS: Linux 2.6.17.14-mm-desktop-9mdvsmp, up 31 days, 22:48.]

Bottled Water
http://tobyinkster.co.uk/blog/2008/02/18/bottled-water/