Sorry for the late reply. I have overlooked this thread The template parser trims parameters of the replace option, so the spaces are not included. You are right, it was a bad idea to do this. I'll fix the problem soon.
The replace template option seems to ignore a space included as the first character of the target string. I often include a leading space to restrict a replacement to a whole words in a sentence. It can also be necessary in a direct replacement, like replace " -- " with "—". Am I missing something, or is there a another way to do this?