Re: Latin-1 non breaking space not highlighted

[Eli Zaretskii]

On Tue, 9 Apr 2002, Richard Stallman wrote:

>     Currently, the definition of ``trailing whitespace'' includes only ASCII 
>     whitespace characters.  If we are to broaden this definition to non-ASCII 
>     characters, I think we need a more general definition; just adding a 
>     Latin-1 NBSP is not enough, IMHO.
> 
> What is the syntax code of Latin-1 NBSP?  Is it "whitespace"?

Yes.

> If it is, then why not make "trailing whitespace" include everything
> with whitespace syntax?

I didn't say we shouldn't do that.  I'm just not sure this is the right 
thing to do.

The current code simply doesn't consult the syntax tables, it has the 
``whitespace'' characters hardwired into it.

I cannot think of any particularly bad consequences of using the syntax 
tables, but I do see some issues that perhaps need to be considered:

  - the definition of whitespace will become mode-dependent;

  - Lisp programs that modify syntax tables could affect the 
    trailing-whitespace feature; in particular, if some unexpected 
    characters are defined to have whitespace syntax, users of trailing 
    whitespace might become surprised by the results.