dashes and non-breaking spaces

[Paul Pogonyshev]

2004-12-21  Richard M. Stallman  <address@hidden>

        * xdisp.c (get_next_display_element): Display codes 8a0 and 8ad
        specially as `\ ' and `\-'.

This breaks my Wikipedia mode pretty badly.  While I understand the change
for non-breaking space, escaping the dash like this looks really improper
with variable-pitch fonts.  Can we back out the dash-thing or make it
customizable in some way?

I also had non-breaking space highlighted with a special face that had a
very-light-gray background (the "normal" being white), so that they were
recognizable, yet the text was perfectly readable.  Maybe it is possible to
build it into Emacs somewhere on a low level?  I.e. non-breaking space
would be displayed without the backslash, but with a different face.

I'm not arguing about defaults here, but I really want some variables to
control these things.

Paul