Re: Strange whitespaces.

[Gregory Heytings]

> name: NO-BREAK SPACE
>
> name: EN SPACE
>
> I am puzzled by this phenomenon: Why do people design so many whitespace 
> representations and how to safely manipulate them between different 
> editors

There's nothing strange happening here.  There are indeed many kinds of 
spaces with different properties, just like there are many kinds of dashes 
with different properties.  An en space is a half em space, just like an 
en dash is a half em dash.  A no-break space is what its name suggests, it 
means that the editor should not break the line there.  Say you want to 
indicate a list in a paragraph with (a), (b), (c), for example in: "We 
need to buy (a) apples, (b) brownies, (c) chocolate."  You typically do 
not want to see:

We need to buy (a) apples, (b)
brownies, (c) chocolate.

and you do this by putting a no-break space between "(a)" and "apples", 
"(b)" and "brownies", "(c)" and "chocolate".