- From: Abigail <abigail@fnx.com>
- Date: Sun, 13 Apr 1997 13:39:28 -0400 (EDT)
- To: jkorpela@cc.hut.fi (Jukka Korpela)
- Cc: www-html@w3.org
You, Jukka Korpela, wrote: ++ ++ On Fri, 11 Apr 1997, Terje Norderhaug wrote: ++ ++ > A better idea would be a shared dictionary of words and how they are ++ > splitted residing on the network. ++ ++ Hyphenation is a strongly language-dependent issue, so what we basically ++ need is support to different languages (including the HTTP level features ++ and the proposed LANG attribute at the HTML level). For example, in ++ English documents hyphenation is usually not desirable, whereas in ++ Finnish documents it is often crucial for good-quality presentation ++ since words are often very long; and in Finnish hyphenation can mostly ++ be done on algorithmic basis (without dictionaries), and if high-quality ++ hyphenation is desired, one really needs program which performs ++ morphological analysis (in addition to using a dictionary). Most languages ++ are probably somewhere between, but one should _not_ assume that ++ dictionaries or explicit hyphenation by authors are are the universally ++ correct approach. TeX has solved this problem many, many moons ago, long before TBL ever thought of the WWW. TeX uses rules, and it very seldom makes mistakes. It also allows authors to hypenate, but since the ruleset is quite good, an author only needs to hypenate exceptions, like names, foreign words and new words. (I presume the ruleset includes a small dictionary for common exceptions to the rules.) For different languages, different rulesets can be used. Abigail
Received on Sunday, 13 April 1997 13:39:27 UTC