Non Breaking Space is smaller than regular space when text is full justified

[Shlomit Heymann]

Dear all,

I thought Non breaking space is getting the width of the paragraph values and should be the same width as a normal space but this is not the case. It's becoming a huge problem in French where there are non braking spaces before punctuation marks and it doesn't look good.

This only happens when the text is in full justify (also on full justified lines in the middle of a paragraph defined with left justification).

A screenshot is attached.

Thank you,

Shlomit

[jmlevy]

Hi Schlomit,

it's very strange: the nonbreaking space should effectively have the same width as the regular space except if you use a fixed with nonbreaking space. What version of Garamond do you use?

[rob day]

The width of a space and non breaking space would be defined in the font, not the application, but I’m not seeing the problem. What’s the font? Could you share your example?

[jmlevy]

Yes Rob, but Schlomit seems to use Garamond (which version) and the nonbreaking space in Adobe Garamond Pro is the same as the regular one (I just checked before answering), and as most of the (well designed) fonts.

[Jongware]

It may be because InDesign is sometimes too smart ...

According to the official documentation, all a non-breaking space does is to prohibit breaking on it, but for the rest it should act as a regular space. However, what if there is a glyph (which could be an image) provided for the non-breaking space in your current font? Then it must use this character, and its associated width!

See https://indesignsecrets.com/topic/fixed-width-vs-regular-nonbreak-spaces for the same problem.

Editing the font and removing the non-breaking space from it is quite a radical solution, but without doing this you can't use that code. Instead, I suggest using No Break over the words that you want to keep together.

[Barb Binder]

Hi Shlomit Heymann:

Two more thoughts:

1. It is typical to set em dashes with either no spaces on either side, or thin spaces on both sides. I personally prefer thin spaces, but whatever you pick, consistency is the key.
2. You can define a GREP style to locate a word followed by an em dash (with or without spaces) and automatically assign a No Break character style to it.

~Barb

[jmlevy]

It is typical to set em dashes with either no spaces on either side

Hi Barb,

not in French!

[Frans v.d. Geest]

jmlevy  schreef

It is typical to set em dashes with either no spaces on either side

Hi Barb,

not in French!

Neither in Dutch! And we use en-dashes: “This is an – although simple – example how we use it.”

[Barb Binder]

Good to know, jmlevy!

But the GREP style idea should still be valid?

~Barb

[Laubender · Accepted solution]

Hi Shlomit,

another cause could be the used paragraph composer perhaps.

Do you see this with the World Ready Paragraph Composer as well with the Adobe Paragraph Composer?

Sample with:

Top frame is using the Adobe Paragraph Composer

Bottom frame is using the World Ready Paragraph Composer

Regards,
Uwe

[Shlomit Heymann]

Oh yes. I just figured it out myself.

I feel furious because I'm sure this bug was submitted ages ago, and while we pay like everybody else there are so many unfixed bugs.

(which is why I hardly submit anymore bugs - what is the point if nothing is fixed?)

(do you know that until today we need to import word 97-2003 documents? And they should be done on windows otherwise there is a mixture with language definitions which is a problem with bi-lingual text).

So yes,

I feel furious and so so frustrated. And sad for not enjoying some features.

Thank you everybody,

I'm sorry I forgot to check this option before posting this.

Shlomit

[Laubender]

https://forums.adobe.com/people/Shlomit+Heymann  wrote

…I feel furious because I'm sure this bug was submitted ages ago, and while we pay like everybody else there are so many unfixed bugs. (which is why I hardly submit anymore bugs - what is the point if nothing is fixed?)
…

Hi Shlomit,

don't hesitate to submit bug reports at: Adobe InDesign Feedback

Even if you think they were already reported years ago.

Just make the reports public here in InDesign Forum and post links to the reports so that we can vote for fixing them.

Regards,
Uwe

[Laubender]

Also found this on InDesign Secrets from June 2011:

Using Flush Space to Add Equal Space Between Text

David Blatner June 20, 2011

https://indesignsecrets.com/using-flush-space-to-add-equal-space-between-text.php

Flush Space will not work as expected if used with the Adobe World-Ready Paragraph Composer.

David already did a bug report on this at Prerelease.

Here a sample where I used Flush Space with Fully Justified.

Regards,
Uwe

[Shlomit Heymann]

Der Uwe,

I have reported this bug but I can tell you they will not fix it.

The Adobe World Ready was written back than by Winsoft who were in charge of developing the Hebrew technology. I think whatever was done there is too complicated for Adobe to deal with so they do nothing about it.

I just went into my reported bus since the latest pre-release (It changed and I can't find the old ones I reported). The bugs are still open and I promise you that they will do nothing about it.

I once open a discussion about not fixing the Hebrew bugs, no one answered or cared.

We will forever pay like everybody else but our version will continue to be with same bugs and worse forever.

Shlomit

[Jongware]

Hi Uwe,

Has this been brought up before? I did a cursory search but the days that Google showed only web pages that you search for are definitely over ... ("Did you mean 'fix space in design'?")

Has it already been submitted to the Report-a-bug site?

[Laubender]

Hi Jongware,

don't know if that was ever reported.

It definitely should. Cannot find something related at InDesign UserVoice.

Have to see if something is reported at Prerelease perhaps.

Regards,
Uwe

[Jongware]

Hi Uwe,

I did a few small tests and exported a single page document with and without some non breaking hard spaces (U+00A0) and with the regular Paragraph Composer versus the World Ready composer.

Checking the Inventory report for the used fonts & glyphs in those documents show that:

1. The Paragraph Composer correctly exports non breaking spaces and also spaces them correctly (that is, with the width of the regular space).

2. The World Ready composer does not export non breaking spaces. It also does not space them correctly.

It looks like the WR programmer mistook this code for the Non-Breaking Fixed Width Space! So let's test that theory.

3. Paragraph composer: a Non-Breaking Fixed Width spaces does not appear as U+00A0 in the PDF, only regular spaces.

4. .. And neither with the World Ready Composer -- no surprise, this looks exactly the same as #2 above.

No promises, but perhaps I could use IndyFont to create a few different space glyphs and check what the composers do with all of this; sort of the same thing Marc did when checking the behavior of hyphens (Indiscripts :: Customize InDesign Hyphens with IndyFont).

[Frans v.d. Geest]

3. Paragraph composer: a Non-Breaking Fixed Width spaces does not appear as U+00A0 in the PDF, only regular spaces.

So, you are all saying there is no difference in the end between the standard non breaking Space and the Fixed Width Non breaking Space?

[Jongware]

https://forums.adobe.com/people/Frans+van+der+Geest+%28ACP%29  wrote

3. Paragraph composer: a Non-Breaking Fixed Width spaces does not appear as U+00A0 in the PDF, only regular spaces.

So, you are all saying there is no difference in the end between the standard non breaking Space and the Fixed Width Non breaking Space?

Yup, that's right.

But of course they still do not break and they're fixed width, which both are different from regular spaces -- that comment "only regular spaces" is a note on their PDF encoding, and I only mentioned this for the Non-B Fixed Width spaces because regular Non B-spaces do get encoded as such (U+00A0) inside a PDF.

The behaviors commented on #3 and #4 are totally expected. Only #2 is the exception.