[l2h] Trouble with control space

Greg Gamble gregg at maths.uwa.edu.au
Fri Feb 10 14:25:26 CET 2006


On Thu, Feb 09, 2006 at 12:26:42PM +0000, Anthony Stone wrote:
>  > > I'm having trouble with LaTeX2html's treatment of "control space",
>  > > i.e. backslash followed by space, which TeX and LaTeX use to force a
>  > > space after a control sequence. That is, if I say
>  > > \newcommand{\foo}{{\sc Foo}}
>  > > to get Foo in caps and small caps, I have to write \foo\ in the LaTeX
>  > > source in order to make sure it is followed by a space.
>  > 
>  > Dear Anthony,
>  > 
>  > This is a `feature', not of LaTeX2HTML, but of (La)TeX which uses a space
>  > to separate tokens. You will find that the space disappears in your .dvi,
>  > .ps and .pdf versions as well. You need to do one of:
>  > 
>  >   ... \foo\ FOLLOWING TEXT
>  >   ... \foo~FOLLOWING TEXT
>  >   ... {\foo} FOLLOWING TEXT
>  >
>  > [snip]
> 
> Thank you. I am already using the first of these constructions (i.e. 
> "control space", in the terminology of the TeXbook), as I thought I
> made clear. The problem is that not only does it not work, it seems
> that some of the following material gets gobbled up and lost.

Hmm! ... it seems I misunderstood what you were asking. It is supposed
to work with LaTeX2HTML, and in my experience it always has. 

> I am also aware of the workarounds suggested, and I can use one or
> more of them in running text. The problem also arises in math mode,
> where "\ " is used to force a space. Most of the workarounds do not
> work here, though I can achieve what I want, for example by defining
> \spc to mean \mkern6mu and using that instead.
> 
> The fact is that "\ " doesn't behave in LaTeX2html as it does in
> LaTeX. I believe that this is a bug. The fact that there are
> workarounds doesn't alter this.

I think you should provide a short example that exhibits the problem.
Maybe it's something else that's the problem.

Regards,
Greg Gamble



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