> But by definition, different types of spaces all have to look exactly the same when rendered as text.
Only in the sense that they look like nothing at all. They can, however differ in how much nothingness they represent [1] which I would argue can make them look quite different one another.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whitespace_character#Unicode (Feel free to ignore tabs, line breaks and other characters that don't feel space-y enough. There should still be plenty left to choose from.)
> The confusion between between a zero and an O would only happen to a human
It happens to a computer doing optical character recognition (OCR) on a scanned document. Or a machine vision system reading street signs or other text.
Re:When a Space Is Not a Space
by SiempreViernes on Thursday June 17, 2021 @05:11AM
(#27537612)
> But by definition, different types of spaces all have to look exactly the same
The article is in fact about a case where this didn't happen, and in general it seems weird to insist that different spaces must look the same.
Also, zero-O confusion can be remedied by simply choosing the right font. But by definition, different types of spaces all have to look exactly the same when rendered as text. To inspect and diagnose the problem, you have to switch to a different form of character representation, like hex or Unicode code points.