Re: [NTG-context] characterspacing not always working in LMTX

On 15 Jan 2020, at 10:15, Hans Hagen wrote:

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By the way, thin spaces are not specific to French typography, historically speaking, since they seem to have been used everywhere in Europe for centuries — at least in England, Belgium, Germany and Italy (probably in the Netherlands too, I will check). In France and sometimes in England, thin spaces were often used before commas as well. I wonder why most countries stopped using them. Out of laziness ? :-) never seen them in dutch ... i think not so much lazyness but side effect of going digital ... i bet that these spaces were also (ab)used to justify lines (cheat a bit) i.e. manual injection of some lead blob

Dutch typesetting had some rules for thin spaces in a transition period from full spaces (early) to no spaces (modern). Much of this change happened in the (late) 19th century, so I guess it had more to do with linotype/monotype than with modern digitisation. Best wishes, Taco