Maximum number of Space Characters

[AzizMostafa]

Dear Friends,
What is the maximum number of Space Characters a font can have?
Is it possible to include a negative space (narrower than zero)?
Peace with Flowers
http://www.CrAUSwords.com/flowers/WFlowers.htm

[Bhikkhu Pesala]

There are two spaces in the ANSI range: 32 and 160 (non-breaking space). These are usually the same width.

In the General Punctuation range, there are numerous other spaces including a zero-width space, primarily for use with Asian fonts, which don't normally use spaces, to allow line-breaks at predefined places.

I don't think it is possible to set a negative value for the advance-width, although one can set a negative value for the left side-bearing for overstrike characters and combining diacritical marks.

Perhaps kerning can be used to achieve what you need.

[Dick Pape]

I couldn't get the space character to go negative but it is possible in FC to set each character width less than the actual size in order to get an overlap.

Autometics: White Space Before = 0 and White Space After -200 overlaps the letters by 200 (funits). Knowing they are all 200 narrower you could use special space characters to widen them as you want.

You could design spaces 50 wide, 100 wide, 200 wide and normal width and then insert the one you want after or before each letter. These could be built from any available glyph but would work like a space character.

Since you know the shortened width (200 in this instance) it makes it easy to calculate which space letter to use... maybe.

[AzizMostafa]

Thanks for All.
I have found more info here:
http://www.p22.com/lanston/products/spacing_sorts.html
U+0020 space
U+00A0 no-break space
U+2000 en quad
U+2001 em quad
U+2002 en space
U+2003 em space
U+2004 three-per-em space
U+2005 four-per-em space
U+2006 six-per-em space
U+2007 figure space
U+2008 punctuation space
U+2009 thin space
U+200A hair space
U+200B zero width space
U+202F narrow no-break space
U+205F medium mathematical space
U+3000 ideographic space
U+FEFF zero width no-break space
________________________
Many Thanks again with Flowers

[Dick Pape]

I wonder if there is a typographical difference between a quad and a space? In my copy of Arial Unicode font they are both the same size (en quad = 1024, en space = 1024 and em quad and em space = 2048).

All the others (3 per, 4 per, 6 per) were rounded fractions of 2048. Thin and hair spaces were 1/10 and 1/20th of 2048. Nice mathematical relationships.

In this font, the 0020 Space was 569. Wonder how that's determined? The punctuation space was also 569 with the figure space twice that at 1139. Seemingly, there were two measurements -- letter sizes and space sizes?

If a space and no-break space are both 569, what is the purpose/function of the no-break space? A space is a space you'd think.

[Erwin Denissen]

Taken from Microsoft Latin 1- Space Characters Design Standards:

The no-break space is the same as the word space character with the added functionality of providing a way to prevent two words from being separated by a line break.

Example: If the words 'Monotype's Arial' were at the end of a sentence and the author wishes for them to remain as a pair, a no-break space character could be used to keep the two words together.

[Bhikkhu Pesala]

Space Character Design Standards at Microsoft Typography.