Thanks, David. I tried \starttext A. E. Samuel\crlf A.\ E.\ Samuel\crlf A.~E.~Samuel \stoptext and can see no difference (ConTeXt ver: 2008.07.14 18:07 MKII). The tilde is not really a good way for me to go. The problem is that I publish a journal in which the bibliography is punctuated mainly by “.” Introducing tildes (which make spaces non-breaking) would affect the line-breaking negatively. Alan On Jul 16, 2008, at 22;27,59 , David wrote:

On Tue, 15 Jul 2008 17:30:19 -0400, Alan Bowen wrote:

...

I have the latest ConTeXt and am using mkii.

One used to be able to reduce the spacing after an initial by by typing “.\<space>”, but this no longer seems to work. Compare the inter-word spacing in

\starttext A. E. Samuel\crlf A.\ E.\ Samuel

\stoptext

If the is a difference here, I am having trouble seeing it; and on a typeset page, the gaps after the initials just seem too big.

In general, I find that the spacing after certain characters ---e.g., “)”---has been increased of late. Is this in fact the case? Or should I go back to my old glasses?

Have you tried:

\starttext A. E. Samuel\crlf A.~E.~Samuel

\stoptext

?

Last time I tried, this one worked for me.

David ___________________________________________________________________________________ If your question is of interest to others as well, please add an entry to the Wiki!

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2008/7/17 David :

On Thu, 17 Jul 2008 07:46:21 -0400, Alan Bowen wrote:

...

Thanks, David. I tried

\starttext A. E. Samuel\crlf A.\ E.\ Samuel\crlf A.~E.~Samuel

\stoptext

and can see no difference (ConTeXt ver: 2008.07.14 18:07 MKII). The tilde is not really a good way for me to go. The problem is that I publish a journal in which the bibliography is punctuated mainly by "." Introducing tildes (which make spaces non-breaking) would affect the line-breaking negatively.

Oh - sorry about that.

What happens if you use your preferred way, but add the command \fixedspaces somewhere previously in the document?

I've discovered that this command is now required to get either the \ . or the ~. to have any effect for me. The problem is, I don't know how to turn it off afterwards. :-)

You can't, there is no command to reset it but this should do it. \def\variablespaces {\letcatcodecommand \ctxcatcodes `\~ \nonbreakablespace} Wolfgang

On Thu, Jul 17, 2008 at 4:53 PM, David wrote:

On Thu, 17 Jul 2008 16:01:17 +0200, Wolfgang Schuster wrote:

...

2008/7/17 David :

...

On Thu, 17 Jul 2008 07:46:21 -0400, Alan Bowen wrote:

...

Thanks, David. I tried

\starttext A. E. Samuel\crlf A.\ E.\ Samuel\crlf A.~E.~Samuel

\stoptext

and can see no difference (ConTeXt ver: 2008.07.14 18:07 MKII). The tilde is not really a good way for me to go. The problem is that I publish a journal in which the bibliography is punctuated mainly by "." Introducing tildes (which make spaces non-breaking) would affect the line-breaking negatively.

Oh - sorry about that.

What happens if you use your preferred way, but add the command \fixedspaces somewhere previously in the document?

I've discovered that this command is now required to get either the \ . or the ~. to have any effect for me. The problem is, I don't know how to turn it off afterwards. :-)

You can't, there is no command to reset it but this should do it.

\def\variablespaces {\letcatcodecommand \ctxcatcodes `\~ \nonbreakablespace}

Thanks Wolfgang. I prefer to have this behaviour available all the time, and I don't understand why anyone would want it turned off - just wanted to apologize for giving incomplete information.

(Any idea why \fixedspaces has been changed from default to optional?)

What do you mean with this, enabling \fixedspaces by default would be a stupid decision because ~ would now insert only a space with the width of "0" and not the width from a normal space. Wolfgang

On Thu, 17 Jul 2008 11:13:15 -0400, Alan Bowen wrote:

Thanks, David.

I had not realized that there was a command \fixedspaces. Is it documented somewhere?

It's in cont-eni on page 72. However, I have not needed the command until recently - I have used the tilde to create narrower spaces many times without using \fixedspaces in my old files, but lately it seems this step has become necessary (again?). I don't know when the change took place. David