[tex4ht] tex4ht support for Non-Breaking Space according to \quad and \qquad etc..

[Nasser M. Abbasi]

Hello;

The following tex file
-------------------
\documentclass[12pt]{article}
\begin{document}
This is \qquad space.
\end{document}
-------------------

when compiled using htlatex foo.tex produces this html for
the line above

------------------------

<!--l. 6--><p class="noindent" >This is       space.
     
----------------------------------

But the above space in HTML shows up as a single space does
not show up. It should have used Non-Breaking Space "&nbsp".

One way to add this support is given by Radhakrishnan in
this answer:

http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.comp.tex.tex4ht/86

One has to add this to the .cfg

\makeatletter
% thin space to html thin space
%\ <at> ifundefined{HCode}{}{\def\thinspace{\HCode{\string&\#x2009;}}}
% thin space to html non-breaking space
\ <at> ifundefined{HCode}{}{\def\thinspace{\HCode{\string&\#x00A0;}}}
\makeatother

I was wondering if it is not much work, if this could be
integrated into tex4ht itself, so that it works like the above
out of the box for both \quad and \qquad?

thank you
--Nasser