Em and En spaces

how it is done in Indesign which has considerable support for these things, but there too there is no keyboard shortcut that I could find, they do it via a palette as well ... QuarkXpress had an application level shortcut for them but that was pre OSX and Unicode fonts.

Ach.

There is a set of characters for spacing. Some came from ANSI X3.4 and ISO 646 (tabulator, space), others came from XCCS. These characters are available in ISO-IEC 10646 and, therefore, in the Apple Character Palette. These affect search in document markups (HTML, XML) and document descriptions (PDF, XPS).

There is also a set of spacing commands in PostScript-based page design software. These commands do not/should not insert ISO-IEC 10646 characters, they insert positioning commands based on the square of the point size, and make whatever moves relative to the origins of the x-y coordinate space configured by the designer.

The rule is to keep the source character string as simple and as straightforward as at all possible for Unicode imaging. The rule is also to keep the source colour spaces as simple and as straightforward for ICC imaging. Which, Peter, means RGB and L a*b without mucking around with your CMYK -:)

Henrik

These affect search in document markups (HTML, XML) and document descriptions (PDF, XPS).

Whether searchability is even a relevant consideration depends on the purpose of the document, and in any case a properly constructed search engine should treat em and en spaces as if they were the ascii variety.

By the way, I think it's time for you to provide some info in your profile about the equipment and software you are using. Sometimes from your postings it is not clear whether you actually have Pages or the current OS version, and it is valuable for recipients of your advice to know whether it is based on real world testing or something else.

The workaround was very hit and miss so wouldn't recommend. Copy and paste is fine.

If you wanted you could also make a custom keyboard layout where en and em spaces are directly assigned to keys or key combos you don't normally use. The tool for this is Ukelele:

http://scripts.sil.org/ukelele

I think you would probably need to go to Character Palette (Edit > Special Characters) and insert them from the Code Tables (Unicode 2002 and 2003).

Option spacebar = em space

Peter

Option spacebar = em space

I get no-break space doing that.

Can you program a shortcut?

You could try using Pages > Preferences > Autocorrection > Symbol and Text Substitution

Pick some character you don't normally use as the input.

I am not familiar with em and en spaces. When or what do you use them for?

Hello Fruhulda

I wasn't too.
So I looked at:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_(punctuation)

Yvan KOENIG (VALLAURIS, France) dimanche 15 novembre 2009 14:49:58

Here is what I get with the Character Palette.

Yvan KOENIG (VALLAURIS, France) lundi 16 novembre 2009 21:01:24

The question here is about how to make spaces, not dashes. The latter can be made from the keyboard as you described, but the former not.

Peter,

Check here http://indiscripts.com/blog/public/data/idcs4-special-characters/en_InDesignCS4S pecialChars.pdf and see if this is what you're looking for.

Walt

Full tip here:

http://www.freeforum101.com/iworktipsntrick/viewtopic.php?p=191&mforum=iworktips ntrick#191

Peter