Template:Ns/doc

The Template:Ns inserts any count of non-breaking spaces ( ) as the number in parameter 1 (default: 3 spaces). The count is limited to 0-83 spaces, where 0 produces nothing. The intent is to provide a short markup template to insert extra spacing, rapidly, where text-wrapping is not wanted.

Usage: 3{{ns}}spaces{{ns}}here → 3 spaces here

The effect of the count, such as in "{{ns|30}}" is identical to putting 30 copies of " " into the text.

In translation of text to uppercase letters, the spacing is retained. Compare:

{{uc: Begin{{ns|4}}end }} → BEGIN END
{{uc: Begin{{spaces|4}}end }} → BEGIN&NBSP;&NBSP;&NBSP;&NBSP;END

For gaps wider than 83 spaces, then multiple instances can be used, such as "{{ns|80}}{{ns|10}}" to insert 90 non-breaking spaces.

Performance considerations

The Template:Ns has been designed to rapidly insert a few, or numerous, non-breaking spaces where wrapping is not wanted, such as to pad table headings or align some entries in columns. It has been clocked to run faster than 1,530x times per second (in December 2012). The number of spaces, from 0 to 83, does not affect the speed of formatting. It invokes parser function {padleft:} to repeat " " several, or dozens, of times. Also, the expansion depth has been kept limited, as only 5 levels deep, to allow use anywhere, to generate spaces in any complex templates or tables.

Beyond the maximum count of 83 spaces, the template truncates at 500-characters long (limited by padleft), with "&#" at the end. The default count, as 3 spaces, was chosen because a 1-or-2-space gap is often coded as simply "  " and hence, 3 spaces is the first gap needing longer markup. The short template name, "ns" avoids interleaving letters as "nsbp" for dyslexic users.

For gaps wider than 83 spaces, then multiple instances of {ns} can be used, such as "{{ns|80}}{{ns|10}}" to insert 90 non-breaking spaces.