Re: [xsl] Hyphenation in XSL FO

[Gustaf Liljegren <gustaf dot liljegren at xml dot se>]

David Carlisle wrote:

>If the rules are sufficiently good then you don't need so many
>exceptions. English (especially with UK as opposed to American
>hyphenation rules) is probably the worst of the European languages

I wouldn't say English is the hardest. In Swedish, there are many compound
words, like "sidlayout" (page layout) or "dokumenthantering" (document
management). In these two examples, there are only one natural place for a
hyphen. To add another level of complication, you may construct your own
words, so if you have a page layout problem, you may say that you have a
"sidlayoutsproblem". And when you found a solution, you have a
"sidlayoutsproblemslösning" (well, there are better ways to say that, but
it's not grammatically wrong). In this case, a program has to know each of
the words to break it naturally (between two words).

There was a proposal (acctually by two Swedes, Svanberg and Järnefors) for
how to solve this in HTML. Not surprisingly, they suggested a hyphenation
list, delivered with every page. Not a neat solution, but probably the best
around for Swedes, if you care for hyphenation.

>That's what   is for isn't it?

Smart, I didn't think of that. Hope implementors do. There's no obvious
reason for a special treatment of no-break spaces or soft hyphens in FO, is
it?

Thanks for the explanation about TeX.

Gustaf Liljegren


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