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Comment by sjwright | Hacker News Reader

The problem is that Word is a WYSIWYG editor, so it can’t ignore second spaces. It must affect the layout.

(FWIW, I think WYSIWYG editors are a bad hack and should be avoided wherever possible. Either use a semantic editor or a real page layout program.)

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I don't think that's what WYSIWYG means. It simply means the display onscreen is what will be printed (or otherwise what others will see)

I think the GP is distinguishing between an ignored space and an ignored press of the space bar. The GGP was saying that in Lyx, the extra space in the source doesn't show up in there rendered document.

I think the GP was saying that a WYSIWYG editor can't ignore a space. I think the GP is saying a WYSIWYG editor could ignore a keypress and not insert the space, but if it puts a space in the source... it has to be in the rendered output, as there's little to no distinction between source and rendered output in a WYSIWYG editors.

Now, I think there's some middle ground, where a WYSIWYG editor could insert a zero-width space for the second space bar press, but I think that would be very confusing for most users and of very little practical benefit, even for power users.

if you were going to do that, i think you should render two half width spaces rather than a full width and a zero width, so the cursor still moves naturally.

Excellent suggestion. How could I have forgotten about half-width spaces?

This would only work when editing, not when typing it out the first time.

Sure, the first space would be full width, the second would be half width but would also cause the one before it to become half width. You wouldn't really see that there were half width spaces until you edit, but they are there as soon as typed.

I've started using Typora [1] recently. It's the best of both worlds.

[1] https://typora.io

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