Thanks, David.

I had not realized that there was a command \fixedspaces. Is it  
documented somewhere?

The sample file
\starttext
\fixedspaces

A. E. Samuel\crlf
A.\ E.\ Samuel\crlf
A.~E.~Samuel

\stoptext

still produces the same spacing for “A. E. Samuel” and  “A.\ E.\  
Samuel”. The spacing in “A.~E.~Samuel” is visibly larger.

We seem to have lost a very fundamental TeX feature here—and gained  
others of questionable value such as the increased spacing after “)”.

Is there a way for a user to (re)define or customize such spacing  
issues?

Alan
On Jul 17, 2008, at 09;46,18 , David wrote:

> On Thu, 17 Jul 2008 07:46:21 -0400, Alan Bowen wrote:
>
>> Thanks, David. I tried
>>
>> \starttext
>> A. E. Samuel\crlf
>> A.\ E.\ Samuel\crlf
>> A.~E.~Samuel
>>
>> \stoptext
>>
>> and can see no difference (ConTeXt  ver: 2008.07.14 18:07 MKII). The
>> tilde is not really a good way for me to go. The problem is that I
>> publish a journal in which the bibliography is punctuated mainly by
>> “.” Introducing tildes (which make spaces non-breaking) would affect
>> the line-breaking negatively.
>
> Oh - sorry about that.
>
> What happens if you use your preferred way, but add the command
> \fixedspaces somewhere previously in the document?
>
> I've discovered that this command is now required to get either the  
> \ .
> or the ~. to have any effect for me. The problem is, I don't know how
> to turn it off afterwards. :-)
>
> David
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