Like, it's part of the html specification if I'm not mistaken. It's not like HN is doing this deliberately.
Fuck. I don't even know what I'd have to do if I wanted to fake it... is there a double-width space in Unicode?
Fuck. I don't even know what I'd have to do if I wanted to fake it... is there a double-width space in Unicode?
I once encountered a bizarre bug caused by a user whose keyboard was somehow configured to automatically insert these if they added two or more sequential spaces.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-breaking_space
Unicode A0 is embedded in my mind because of that.
An "en space" (half-em) is pretty close though: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whitespace_character#/media/...
And web browsers muddied the water a lot, since rendering two spaces is generally done by rendering two spaces, unless you're on the web and then have to do something special (some people do! is pretty common). Personally I think this alone is the biggest influence that trained generations that one space is the majority and therefore the most correct.
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I wish they called the zero-width spaces "non-space", so we could have both (non-breaking space) and &zwsp; (breaking non-space).