[O] export to HTML with nbsp

[hymie!]

Greetings.

I tried searching for this, because I think I've seen it before, but
searching for "nbsp" brings up dozens of false-positives.

So my underlying problem is that I'd like to combine markups

~commandname option1 /option2/~

and end up with options2 being both monospace and italic.  I couldn't get
the borders and prematch and postmatch working correctly.  I also failed to
figure out how to create my own monospace-and-italic markup style.  So I
eventually gave up and settled for

~commandname option1 /option2/ \nbsp~

which works great inside emacs, and works with export to ASCII.

But when I export to HTML, the \nbsp is not being converted to   like
the docs say it should.  It is just being left as \nbsp .

I just noticed this comment in the doc

Text in the code and verbatim string is not processed for Org mode specific
syntax, it is exported verbatim.

However, again, \nbsp is properly processed when I export to ASCII.  So I'm
confused as to why it's different for export to HTML.

Am I doing something wrong?  Or is there something I need to do to make this
export correctly?

Thanks.

--hymie!