[XeTeX] line spacing

Jonathan Kew jonathan_kew at sil.org
Tue Mar 8 00:06:02 CET 2005


On 7 Mar 2005, at 9:59 pm, Ross Moore wrote:

> .....(cut discussion)
>
> Alternatively, why not use ~  in your documents,
> the way it has always been done traditionally in TeX ?
>
> The expansion of ~ should be linked to the encoding
> (in the same way that xunicode does for other characters)
> so as to produce the \char32 character as appropriate.
>
>
> Yes, I think this is the *correct* LaTeX way to proceed:
>
>  (i)  Examine how ~ currently works in the T1 encoding.
> (ii)  mimic this for a robust macro \nonbreakingspace .
> (iii) extend this action for `U' encoding => \char32
> (iv)  activate ^^^^00a0
> (v)   \let ~ \nonbreakingspace   (if advantageous)
> (vi)  \let ^^^00a0\nonbreakingspace
>
> That should result in a fully backwards-compatible
> definition of ^^^^00a0 that will do the right thing
> for auxiliary files, TofCs, indexes, etc.
> (It also will ensure that ~ has this latter property too!)

I don't see any compelling reason to map either ~ or ^^^^00a0 to 
\char32; it would be simpler, and just as effective, to let both of 
these be active characters that expand to {\penalty10000\ } or 
equivalent. That's the TeX way to do a non-breaking space.

So (noting that ^^a0 is a perfectly good short form for ^^^^00a0), how 
about simply:
	\catcode`\^^a0=\active
	\let^^a0=~
(Maybe that's not enough to fit in properly with The LaTeX Way, but you 
get the idea.)

(Yes, there are some circumstances where the end result would be 
different; but they're obscure enough that I think you could ignore 
them. People who really care about them had better know what they're 
doing, and can make their own definitions!)

Just my thoughts on it .... JK



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