Display of no break spaces

Display of no break spaces

[Pascal Quesseveur]

Hello,

I don't understand the mechanism used to display no break
spaces. The character is displayed as a big box with what looks
like small numbers inside. My config is the following:

GNU Emacs 24.2.1 (i386-mingw-nt6.1.7600) of 2012-08-29 on MARVIN
default font is -outline-consolas-normal-r-*-*-*-90-*-*-c-*-*

Here is the ouput of F1-v nobreak-char-display:

nobreak-char-display is a variable defined in `C source code'.
Its value is t

And here is the output of describe-char on a no break space:

--8<---------------cut here---------------start------------->8---
             position: 223 of 305 (73%), column: 0
            character:   (displayed as  ) (codepoint 160, #o240, #xa0)
    preferred charset: iso-8859-1 (Latin-1 (ISO/IEC 8859-1))
code point in charset: 0xA0
               syntax: . 	which means: punctuation
             category: .:Base, b:Arabic, j:Japanese, l:Latin
          buffer code: #xC2 #xA0
            file code: #xA0 (encoded by coding system iso-latin-1-dos)
              display: by display table entry [?􀂷] (see below)

The display table entry is displayed by these fonts (glyph codes):
􀂷: -- no font --
 face: `link'

Character code properties: customize what to show
  name: NO-BREAK SPACE
  old-name: NON-BREAKING SPACE
  general-category: Zs (Separator, Space)
  decomposition: (noBreak 32) (noBreak ' ')

There are text properties here:
  fontified            t
--8<---------------cut here---------------end--------------->8---


I don't understand why the no break space is displayed using link
face. What can I do to change the way it is displayed?

-- 
Pascal Quesseveur
pascal.quesseveur@free.fr

RE: Display of no break spaces

[Drew Adams]

> I don't understand the mechanism used to display no break
> spaces. The character is displayed as a big box with what looks
> like small numbers inside.

That means it is a character that your current font cannot display as the
character itself.  The display indicates its Unicode code.

> I don't understand why the no break space is displayed using link
> face.  What can I do to change the way it is displayed?

When `nobreak-char-display' is non-nil, Emacs shows nobreak spaces using face
`nobreak-space', which inherits from face `escape-glyph'.

Dunno why it says it uses face `link' - perhaps something else is also kicking
in here (e.g. it is part of a link).

Option `nobreak-char-display' turns highlighting on/off for both nobreak spaces
and nobreak hyphens - they are inseparable wrt this highlighting.

For better control over highlighting of these (and any other) characters, try
library `highlight-chars.el'.

overview: http://emacswiki.org/emacs/ShowWhiteSpace#HighlightChars
code: http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs-en/download/highlight-chars.el

Re: Display of no break spaces

[Peter Dyballa]

Am 03.01.2013 um 14:16 schrieb Pascal Quesseveur:

> I don't understand why the no break space is displayed using link
> face.

Because it's fontified with that property.

> What can I do to change the way it is displayed?

Use a plain text buffer to get rid of fontification or switch that off (launch GNU Emacs with -Q)! You can also switch to a font that has U+00A0 defined or create a fontset in which this character is defined as coming from a font with NO-BREAK SPACE.

I get, for example, in X11:

	             position: 206 of 6832 (3%), column: 0
	            character:   (displayed as  ) (codepoint 160, #o240, #xa0)
	    preferred charset: iso-8859-1 (Latin-1 (ISO/IEC 8859-1))
	code point in charset: 0xA0
	               syntax: . 	which means: punctuation
	             category: .:Base, b:Arabic, j:Japanese, l:Latin
	          buffer code: #xC2 #xA0
	            file code: #xA0 (encoded by coding system iso-latin-1-unix)
	              display: by this font (glyph code)
	    xft:-b&h-Lucida Sans Typewriter-normal-normal-normal-*-10-*-*-*-m-0-iso10646-1 (#xAC)
	       hardcoded face: nobreak-space
	
	Character code properties: customize what to show
	  name: NO-BREAK SPACE
	  old-name: NON-BREAKING SPACE
	  general-category: Zs (Separator, Space)
	  decomposition: (noBreak 32) (noBreak ' ')
	
	There are text properties here:
	  charset              iso-8859-1


--
Greetings

  Pete

You can learn many things from children.  How much patience you have, for instance.
				– Franklin P. Jones

Re: Display of no break spaces

[Pascal Quesseveur]

>"PD" == Peter Dyballa <Peter_Dyballa@Web.DE> a écrit :

  PD> Use a plain text buffer to get rid of fontification or switch
  PD> that off (launch GNU Emacs with -Q)!

OK I found my error. I had some old code to highlight nbsp with a
specific face. It seems that code didn't work since a long time but
until I upgrade to emacs 24 the result was acceptable.

Thanks a lot.


-- 
Pascal Quesseveur
pascal.quesseveur@free.fr