Indicate Non-Breaking Hyphen as a Special Character

[garrettm30]

I would like to request that the non-breaking hyphen (U+2011, the character inserted by that name in the Text->Insert->Hyphens and dashes menu) be indicated as a special character when “Show Special Characters” is enabled.

It is not every document that I use them, but I think it is the majority of them. For example, as my work is in French, I use them:

• In the French versions of B.C. and A.D. for eras: av. J.‑C. and apr. J.‑C., where the abbreviation should not be broken.
• In conjugations involving the “T euphonique” such as fera-t-il where the possible break should be preferred after the first hyphen rather than the second.
• As a personal preference, since I deal with Christian texts, in verse range references when they fall at the end of a paragraph, for example, (Matthieu 19.6-9). where I want to assure that -9). is not alone on a line by itself at the end of a paragraph.

Since the difference with the regular hyphen and non-breaking hyphen is not visible, I keep second-guessing myself as to whether I have already fixed a given text, and the only way I know to check is to copy and paste into the app UnicodeChecker or just to reinsert it to make sure even if it was already done. I always keep Show Special Characters turned on, so I can quickly confirm what type of space I have, and it would be nice if I could do the same with hyphens (in addition to soft hyphens, which are already indicated this way).

[MikeTO]

+1

The four special characters I'm aware of that don't have a special symbol shown are:

• Non-breaking hyphen (2011)
• Em Quad/Mutton (2001)
• En Quad/Nut (2000)
• Ideographic Space (3000)

Also the symbols for Page Break (000C), Odd Page Break, and Even Page Break are identical. ID has separate symbols for all three.

[garrettm30]

16 minutes ago, MikeTO said:

The four special characters I'm aware of that don't have a special symbol shown are:

Thank you for that information, and by the way, I also appreciated the chart you made here:

I haven’t gone to the great trouble to document all that you did, but if it is accurate and I am not mistaken, then non-breaking hyphen is the only special character available from the insert submenu that is not indicated with Show Special Characters. That would argue that perhaps this is just a simple oversight and hopefully easy to fix.

[Dan C]

Thanks for your suggestion @garrettm30!

10 hours ago, MikeTO said:

The four special characters I'm aware of that don't have a special symbol shown are:

• Non-breaking hyphen (2011)
• Em Quad/Mutton (2001)
• En Quad/Nut (2000)
• Ideographic Space (3000)

10 hours ago, MikeTO said:

Also the symbols for Page Break (000C), Odd Page Break, and Even Page Break are identical. ID has separate symbols for all three.

I have raised these both separately with our development team - as I'm not entirely certain if this is expected behaviour currently and therefore correctly an improvement request, or if our team would expect these to be special characters / different symbols respectively and therefore a bug.

I'll be sure to update you here with any information I'm provided

[Dan C]

I can confirm that our developers have verified this is currently expected behaviour, for the following characters:

• Em Quad/Mutton (2001)
• En Quad/Nut (2000)
• Ideographic Space (3000)

As I understand it, the infrequency in which these are used means that 'Special Character' support has not yet been implemented, but is something we may look to add in the future.

For the Non-breaking hyphen (2011), our other 'Special Characters' represent non-marking glyphs, hence this was not considered to be included as one, but is something our team can certainly take under consideration.

Equally, our team expect for all 3 Page Break symbols to be identical at this time, but we may certainly look to adjust this in the future.

Therefore this is correct to be a feature request, rather than a bug report & I have passed on your suggestions and reasoning to our team internally.

I hope this helps!

[MikeTO]

Thanks Dan. Before I forget all this, some thoughts on potential symbols:

• Non-breaking hyphen - ID doesn't have a symbol either but since auto hyphen is a line above the hyphen, perhaps a non-breaking hyphen could be the inverse, a line below the hyphen
• ideographic space - ID just inverts the em space symbol which seams reasonable
• Page Break vs. Even/Odd page breaks - ID does have unique symbols for each but they're not great. Page Break is a down caret with a big dot. Odd is a down caret with 1 little dot and even has 2 little dots. Perhaps for odd/even, just shorten Affinity's big double down arrow and add 1 or 2 dots above. Alternatively, give the arrowhead a twist to the left or right at the bottom.
• Em and en quad - These are redundant spaces so perhaps just show the same as for em and en space. ID maps Em Quad to Flush Space so they don't even support it. They support En Quad but don't have a symbol.

[garrettm30]

7 hours ago, Dan C said:

For the Non-breaking hyphen (2011), our other 'Special Characters' represent non-marking glyphs, hence this was not considered to be included as one, but is something our team can certainly take under consideration.

Thanks for looking into it. I am fine with considering it a feature request. But as to the question of representing non-marking glyphs, I would point out that the soft hyphen is also visible and yet it currently is distinguished in this way. Also, some software calls the equivalent feature “Show invisible characters,” and in that case perhaps one could argue that the non-breaking aspect of the non-breaking hyphen is not visibly distinguished, but as Serif wisely named the feature “Show Special Characters,” it seems like distinguishing a special-case hyphen from the regular variety would not be any stretch to the paradigm.

4 hours ago, MikeTO said:

since auto hyphen is a line above the hyphen, perhaps a non-breaking hyphen could be the inverse, a line below the hyphen

My suggestion would be to follow the same symbol used spacesa regular space is indicated with a dot and a non-breaking space adds to the dot a circumflex accent above it, and several of the other non-breaking spaces also use some variant on the circumflex. Therefore, my first thought would be to apply the circumflex above the visible hyphen. That seems to be consistent, but my preference here is not strong: any symbol at all would be enough for me.

[walt.farrell]

19 minutes ago, garrettm30 said:

But as to the question of representing non-marking glyphs, I would point out that the soft hyphen is also visible and yet it currently is distinguished in this way.

But a soft hyphen is only visible as a blue special character and only when Show Special Characters is active, unless it has become a visible hyphen at the end of a line when it is actually used during automatic hyphenation. Only then does it show as a real (black, vs blue) character.

Non-breaking hyphens are always "real".