Zilla Highlight in Google Docs has extra space appended to end of sentence

[m4rc1e]

This issue was reported to me in an email thread.

Zilla Highlight uses a liga OpenType feature to make the space appear highlighted by replacing the space glyph with a black variant.

lookup BLACKSPACE {
                sub space by space.black;
                sub uni00A0 by space.black;
            } BLACKSPACE;

Google Docs appends a   (uni00A0) to the end of user input.

<span class="kix-wordhtmlgenerator-word-node" style="...">Hello World<span class="goog-inline-block" style="...">&nbsp;</span>

This unfortunately produces the following:

It should look like this:

The easiest solution is to drop uni00A0 from the BLACKSPACE lookup:

lookup BLACKSPACE {
                sub space by space.black;
            } BLACKSPACE;

I'm wondering if anyone can think of any unforeseen consequences by doing this?

[moyogo]

I'm wondering if anyone can think of any unforeseen consequences by doing this?

Some people use uni00A0 on purpose between words or before and after punctuation.

[m4rc1e]

@moyogo This was an assumption I had. Thank you!

[davelab6]

Right, so if anyone else uses nbsp on purpose, then they won't get the 'blackout' effect in the middle of those words, if Marc changes the feature only to remove the sub uni00A0 by space.black; rule.

The docs for the family could tell people who need to use nbsp with blackout to use another character that does the same thing (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-breaking_space#Width_variation) and change that rule to one that uses those other non breaking space characters.

[moyogo]

How about substituting uni00A0 only in that context (at the end of the line)?

[davelab6]

You mean, substituting it only when it is followed by another character?

[m4rc1e]

Thanks @moyogo. I've rewritten the feature in the following manner:

sub space by space.black;
sub uni00A0' @all by space.black;

This does the following:

• Space will always be subbed by space.black
• uni00A0 will only get substituted if uni00A0 is followed by any glyph in the class @all

Here's a demo of the liga feature being enabled and disabled. The text uses uni00A0 instead of spaces. A uni00A0 glyph has also been appended to the end to mimic the same pattern as GF Docs. It seems to be working just fine.

I'll make a quick test font now and try it out in GF Docs.

[m4rc1e]

The string below has uni00A0 instead of a space... its works nicely.

@davelab6 shall we proceed with this contextual sub approach?

[davelab6]

Great work everyone!

On Sep 1, 2017 2:31 AM, "Alex Gibson" notifications@github.com wrote:

Closed #18 https://github.com/mozilla/zilla-slab/issues/18.

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