So, I took Cory's advice: I made a box and bound it to the story_new and 
story_update hooks. It works like a charm.

For those interested, here is the box contents:

my ($hookname, $sid) = @ARGS;
# We've got the story id fed in from the hook

# Get the introtext and the bodytext from the database
my $q_sid = $S->dbh->quote($sid);
my ($rv, $sth) = $S->db_select({
   WHAT => 'introtext,bodytext',
   FROM => 'stories',
   WHERE => qq\|sid = $q_sid\|
});
my $story_data = $sth->fetchrow_hashref;
$sth->finish;
my $introtext = $story_data->{introtext};
my $bodytext = $story_data->{bodytext};

# Do a find-replace on the nbsp's
$introtext =~ s/ / /gi;
$bodytext =~ s/ / /gi;

# Put introtext and bodytext back into the database
my $q_introtext = $S->dbh->quote($introtext);
my $q_bodytext = $S->dbh->quote($bodytext);
($rv, $sth) = $S->db_update({
   WHAT => 'stories',
   SET => qq\|introtext=$q_introtext,bodytext=$q_bodytext\|,
   WHERE => qq\|sid = $q_sid\|
});
$sth->finish;

Cory R. King wrote:
> Howdy Super G,
> 
> Double Space Forever!  I've learned to double space my sentances back in 
> junior high and there is no way I could break the habit now  :-)
> 
> Seriously though?  You would probably have to edit the three functions 
> in the source code that handle incoming text: plaintext, autoformat & 
> the regular HTML.  I'd imagine it would be a simple regex you'd have to 
> insert in each one.  Something like
> 
> # clean up double spaces in HTML
> $content =~ s/  / /gi;
> 
> The other "fix" I can think of is creating a scoop hook after story & 
> comment posts.  You can get the hook to call a box that cleans up the 
> HTML in the comment/story to your liking.  I'm almost positive that the 
> hook will pass in the Story ID or Comment ID when it calls your box 
> code.  A hook/box is probably not the most elegant fix, it probably the 
> easiest way to implement your own HTML filter without touching the 
> source code.
> 
> Or you can just give us guys who are set in their ways a break ;-)
> 
> Let me know if you get something working!
> 
> -- 
> Cory R. King
> Vice President - XLAN, Inc.
> 
> Super G wrote:
>> I've been running a Scoop site for about nine months now (and reading 
>> Scoop sites for a lot longer than that), and there's something bugging 
>> me that I imagine would be quite easy to fix.
>>
>> Many people who learned to type in the typewriter era put two spaces 
>> between a period and the start of the next sentence. If this is done 
>> in an HTML document, the user agent only displays a single space, 
>> conforming with modern typing conventions. However, Scoop seems to 
>> have a quirk where it inserts a non-breaking space (nbsp) character in 
>> place of the second space. This phenomenon can cause some ugliness, 
>> especially when a line starts with the nbsp character, giving a ragged 
>> appearance on the left margin.
>>
>> Is there some kind of patch that can be applied to address this 
>> problem? Or is there some kind of Scoop box that I can include on my 
>> site to filter out the nbsp characters?
>>
>> Thanks,
>> Super G
>> _______________________________________________
>> Scoop-help mailing list
>> Scoop-help at lists.kuro5hin.org
>> http://lists.kuro5hin.org/mailman/listinfo/scoop-help
>>
>