We know you have an opinion on how things should be run around here. These are suggestions for the forums, and the website.This forum is not a place to ask for suggestions to your own coding (or otherwise) problems.
I've tried that before, only to have... less educated users put the spaces in it too. And having to tell them to remove the spaces feels demeaning.
Not arguing against using spaces - certainly a simple answer to a simple problem - I'm just saying that if it could be done for the original highlighter...