Hi Robert, At 2024-08-30T16:29:03+1000, Robert Thorsby wrote: > I wouldn't call myself a typographer but I refuse to allow hyphens to > break, usually via '.hy 0' or by using '\%'. I then kern the tripe out > of any offending line, often using Ted Harding's "poor man's kerning" > trick.
Ooh, that sounds like something good to remind the youngsters of. Have
a link handy?
> However, no matter what you do, you simply *cannot* end the last line
> of a column or page with a hyphen.
That, too, is a policy choice, and a sound one, but neither AT&T nor GNU
troff mandate it in the formatter's own defaults.
groff(7):
Several requests influence automatic hyphenation. Because
conventions vary, a variety of hyphenation modes is available to
the .hy request; these determine whether hyphenation will apply to
a word prior to breaking a line at the end of a page (more or less;
see below for details), and at which positions within that word
automatically determined hyphenation points are permissible. The
localization macro files loaded by troffrc configure a default
hyphenation mode appropriate to the language.
0 disables hyphenation.
1 enables hyphenation except after the first and before the
last character of a word.
The remaining values “imply” 1; that is, they enable hyphenation
under the same conditions as “.hy 1”, and then apply or lift
restrictions relative to that basis.
2 disables hyphenation of the last word on a page.
(Hyphenation is prevented if the next page location trap is
closer to the vertical drawing position than the next text
baseline would be. See section “Traps” below.)
AT&T troff's default was 1, as has groff's been, but we have a NEWS item
in the forthcoming 1.24 release.
NEWS:
* A new request, `hydefault`, and read-only register, `.hydefault`,
manage the default automatic hyphenation mode of an environment.
This resolves a long-standing problem of *roff formatting.
When processing input like this,
.nh
and we temporarily shut off automatic hyphenation,
.hy
the foregoing request would not do exactly what we expect.
AT&T and other troffs would set the hyphenation mode to 1 instead of
the previous value; for GNU troff this was not an appropriate value
for the English hyphenation patterns. (For example, "alibi" would
break as "ali-bi" instead of "al-ibi" after this argumentless `hy`
invocation.) With updates to groff's localization files
accompanying this release, the foregoing input now works as desired.
(All of that said, hyphenation modes of 6 and 14 have long been common
in troff documents or macro packages.)
> So IMHSHO your question does not arise.
IMO, it _does_. ;-)
Regards,
Branden
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