THIN SPACE

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balise75

Hello from France. I am a new user of Scribus and I am working on a book. The ";" and some other punctuation signs need to use what we call in France "une espace fine" and that I have seen translated as "a small space" or "thin space".

The font that I use is Garamond.

If I use "Insert" then "character" the "thin space" possibility is not offered.

If I try (as I have read) to put an Non-Breaking space and then to divide by 4 the size of this space, it does not work neither. When I will have saved the work and then i will open it again, the size will have changed for its first value.

Sorry if I am not clear... English is not my fluent language... but the question is "Does anyone know how to create a thin space, using garamond font, with Scribus ?

Thanks for any clue  :) you will be able to give me.

utnik

hi balise75

i don't know what spaces 'garamond' offers. but you shouldn't search under 'insert' → 'character' – try 'insert' → 'space' instead and scribus will show the different space widths of your chosen font.

utnik

balise75

Oh yes, and thank you for the answer. I should have said of course "insert then space" and that what I was thinking of. And well, it does not offer the thin space. And yes, I have read elsewhere that it was depending on the font (not all fonts allow thin space apparently). Okay. But why when I change the size of the space (using the size of the font), my change disappears ?

a.l.e

if you need thin spaces, use a font that contains the glyph!

as an alternative, you could use the thin space of another font... but i don't think it's a good solution...

changing the size of the space should theoretically work... but i really don't know what's the effect of it (and from what you write, there might be a bug in scribus).

Portreve

#4
[Note: I've heavily edited this post.]

Hi balise75!

Quote from: balise75 on October 10, 2017, 02:58:58 PM
The font that I use is Garamond.

Ok, so, first off, Unicode defines three different specialized space characters of nominally thinner widths than the standard space character. They are:

U+2008 Punctuation Space: Space equal to narrow punctuation of a font > <
U+2009 Thin Space: A fifth of an em (or sometimes a sixth) > <
U+200A Hair Space: Thinner than a thin space; in traditional typography, the thinnest space available > <

In the listings above, the space character between each of the >< corresponds to the character described. You should be able to highlight that character and then copy-n-paste it.

However... I just tried using each of the thinner spacing characters described above in Scribus, and they all are rendered as the standard space character. Even going the route of Insert > Glyph doesn't accomplish anything.

What I'm going to suggest is that, at least for purposes of Scribus, you simply define the appropriate width by way of taking a standard space character and then changing the width manually, and then copy-n-pasting that into each instance of usage. It's not really ideal, but I can't find another way to get what you might be looking for.

crlMIDI

I'm replying to this old thread because it's still relevant, and will try to formulate a new question specifically about configuring the Frame Renderer (below).

Fine typographical detail is important in many languages particularly if, like the OP, you're writing a book. In French, punctuation without the correct spacing looks ugly.

I don't think we should ask Scribus to offer this standard, given that the requirements can be met by using LaTeX either directly or in a Render Frame. In LaTeX the typographic detail is handled by the babel package, with the frenchb option for that language. This inserts the correct spaces, quotation marks, etc. automatically.

For writing books that are mostly text I use LaTeX directly using TexLive with TexStudio or Overleaf (free on line). LibreOffice has the Writer2LaTeX plugin to do the conversion.

The LaTeX Renderer is much more versatile within Scribus; for example you can change the size of the frame. However, the documentation is a little bit succinct and I didn't find how to use my own preamble or adapt the default code to include babel, my own choice of fonts, and some other stuff.