[Freetype] How to properly render advance of whitespace

[Eli Schleifer]

I am having trouble figuring out how much space to use for the white space in between letters. Intentional white space I mean

 

I am extracting the outlines of glyphs for a project and the ‘space’ glyph from Arial TTF is coming up with no drawing and advance of 0 which means I end

Up getting no space when I try to render something like

 

‘A b c d e’

 

I get

 

‘Abcde’

 

Is there some formula for translating average width into the space needed for a white space character?

 

Thanks

Eli