title: Why does HTML require that multiple spaces show up as a single space in the browser?
body: <p>I have long recognized that any set of whitespace in an HTML file will only be displayed as a single space.  For instance, this:</p>
  
  <pre><code>&lt;p&gt;Hello.        Hello. Hello. Hello.                       Hello.&lt;/p&gt;
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>displays as:</p>
  
  <p>Hello.        Hello. Hello. Hello.                       Hello.</p>
  
  <p>This is perfectly fine, as if you need multiple spaces of pre-formatted text you can just use the &lt;pre&gt; tag.  But what is the reason?  More precisely, <strong>why is this in the specification for HTML?</strong></p>