Special characters: whitespace is not displayed

[julen]

If admins specify an space character as part of their special characters, this is not displayed in the editor.

Technically this is part of the DOM and it is rendered, but its styling differs from the rest of the characters. Does anyone have any suggestions on how to depict the whitespace in this context?

Note this will come handy especially for Japanese translators, for whom it is easier to type full-width spaces while using an IME, but at the same time they use regular spaces (\u0020) in translations.

[unho]

This can be an approach: https://blog.codinghorror.com/whitespace-the-silent-killer/

Not that I am a fan.

[iafan]

Currently spaces, if they are inserted into special characters strings in language settings, are rendered as:

<span class="extraspace"> </span>

Probably this was a feature to allow for visual separation of special symbols in the editor, but I'm not sure if this is actively used or important, and whether we want to drop it in favor of being able to specify spaces as insertable symbols. My understanding is also that the latter is really useful function for CJK and more important than mere visual enhancement.

So if we treat spaces as regular insertable symbols, they would need to be rendered as:

<a class="editor-specialchar js-editor-copytext" data-string=" " title="Insert space symbol into the editor">&nbsp;</a>

(note that for display purposes we use   while data-string=" " attribute contains a regular space, and use special title attribute value to indicate the nature of the symbol).

I checked this and it inserts space properly.