LaTeX: remove spaces in French

Question

I write LaTeX docs in French, and babel package puts extra spaces before colons (:). It is usefull, but I don’t want it in URLs:

http ://docbook.org/ns/docbook

Any thoughts how to solve problem?

Thanks!

Answer 1

My suggestion would be using the package hyperref, and then using the command \url{http://example.org/url/here} for your URLs.

With some luck, this hopefully won't be affected by babel.

Answer 2

In french typography colons are special as they should be preceded by a space. The babel package enforces this rule if used with the [french] option.

You can override colons as an active character using the following babel command.

\shorthandoff{:}

Use the following command to switch back colons as an active character.

\shorthandon{:}