How about a shortcut for & ? I find it so useful I have defined strings of 1 to 10 of them:

• Non-breaking spaces
  • Set s10 = %s9%  
    • .
    • . (See, I had to resort to indents to make a vertical ". . .").
    • .
  • Set s1 =  

If there were a 1 character shortcut for  , it could be used anywhere, not just the beginning of a line. Some examples:

• After periods & colons if you are a typewriter refugee that thinks there should be 2 spacesbetween sentences.
• Around the '*', '_', & '=' shortcuts when kerning is needed.
  • this might be more cleanly handled by using CSS to increase the right and left padding to the strong, em and code elements (then the user doesn't need to do anything at all).
• In tables, if you think the verticals crowd the text too much for readablility.
• Any other place in the middle of a line where kerning or tabbing is needed.

Sometimes I think it is a defect in HTML that it always ignores all spaces over 1 & that altering that behavior is so cumbersome.

It if were not so well entrenched, I would suggest '_' & that we use '/' for italics; but I am sure it is too late to consider changing.

• See BetterItalics for arguments why not. -- ArthurClemens - 08 Jan 2004

-- RickArchibald - 08 Jan 2004

It would be better to be literal and not use shorthand at all. For examaple if the user types 5 spaces, the render module converts that to '      ' . Extending the idea, mulitple blank lines would be converted to empty paragraphs (<p> </p>)

-- MattWilkie - 09 Jan 2004

TWiki already preserves white space in =monospaced font text=, e.g. This text  has   more    and     more      spaces

-- PeterThoeny - 10 Mar 2004