Confirmation that spaces are really spaces

[rikforto]

Do spaces ever convey any information that could be required for interpreting the text, or are they wholly predictable?

My question would be: does the predictable writing system cause predictable spaces, or do spaces make the writing system more predictable? In the first case, spaces are spaces. In the second case, they may be something else.

Can you unpack this a bit? I am not intuiting the practical distinction here.