NBSP supposed to stretch, right?

[Richard Wordingham via Unicode]

On Fri, 20 Dec 2019 17:25:17 +0530
Shriramana Sharma via Unicode <unicode at unicode.org> wrote:

> So I never asked for NBSP to disappear. I said I want it to *stretch*.
> And to my mind "stretch" means to become wider than one's normal
> width. It doesn't include decreasing or disappearing width.

Don't spaces sometimes shrink?  I thought they did in some 'show codes'
modes.

> I don't expect NBSP to ever disappear, because spaces disappear only
> at linebreaks, and NBSP simply doesn't stand at linebreaks.

I can certainly imagine someone writing "  <br/>".

Richard.