RE: [Groff] hyphenation in words with explicit hyphen

[Ted Harding]

On 20-Feb-01 Werner LEMBERG wrote:
> shall I modify groff so that words which contain an explicit hyphen
> are hyphenated only there and not at different positions?
>   current:
>     sentence-ending
>        ^    ^   ^
>   new:
> 
>     sentence-ending
>             ^
> This behaviour is also implemented in TeX.
> 
> Maybe it makes sense to be not that rigid, e.g. I could add registers
> `explicit-hyphen-distance-before' (ehdb) and
> `explicit-hyphen-distance-after' (ehda) to specify the number of
> characters before and after an explicit hyphen which are protected
> against implicit breakpoints.  At least for German this is useful;
> additionally, because groff can't optimize paragraphs, it possibly
> avoids ugly gaps in compound words.

I am against the rigidity of the first suggestion, and strongly
in favour of the "ehdb/ehda" mechanism.

German apart, if someone really wants to write

  monooxydase-inhibitor

there could be great ugliness!

Ted.

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Date: 20-Feb-01                                       Time: 22:51:15
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