Re: How come i wrote a NO-BREAK SPACE in xterm+bash ?

["Thomas Schmitt" <scdbackup@gmx.net>]

Hi,

David Wright wrote:
> Poking around in /usr/share/X1/xkb/ I can see that rules/base has lines
> like:
>    nbsp:level4 = +nbsp(level4)
> // level3 & level3ns provide no-breaking spaces starting from level3
> // This is good for typographers but experience shows many users accidently
> // type no-breaking spaces on the CLI (resulting in errors)

I wonder about the ratio of the number of typographers
and the number of "many users". For the latter one should enable
nbsp only on systems with no shell, or give it a visible screen
glyph.

Still trying to grok the xkb stuff, i get the impression
that at least on my system xterm gets to see Alt+Space, not a
"nobreakspace" produced by general keyboard translations.

After all, this line in /etc/X11/app-defaults/XTerm prevents
the unwanted nbsp:

  *VT100.Translations: #override Alt<Key>space: string(" ")

I understand that if xterm saw "nobreakspace" then the line
would have to be

   *VT100.Translations: #override nobreakspace: string(" ")

I tried the latter line as replacement of the former.
This gives me back the unwanted UTF character (194,160) on
Alt+Spacebar in freshly started xterm.


But i may be wrong. Still did not find a comprehensive
introduction to the model of keyboard processing in X.
(And possibly such a comprehensive description might be
 too complicated for me to map it to my actual question.)


Have a nice day :)

Thomas