Language (in)dependent hyphenation properties

Help requested, please...

We are looking for ways to give Web designers more control over
hyphenation/line-breaking, with the help of properties in CSS. We need
expert advice:

  - what do designers want to control?
  - what is the accepted terminology for that?
  - how do the rules differ per language?
  - what happens if the text is multi-lingual?
  - for each of the above, what are acceptable fallbacks? (window too
    narrow, word too long,...)




If you rather react to a concrete proposal, here is a strawman:

    Property:    hyphenation
    Value:       none | avoid | normal | any
    Initial:     normal
    Inherited:   yes
    Applies to:  all elements
    Percentages: N/A

'None' disables hyphenation, 'any' allows breaks anywhere without
regard for valid syllables, 'avoid' and 'normal' are two settings in
between. ('Avoid', might, for example, disallow 3 hyphenated lines in
a row.)

    Property:    minimum-letters-before-break, minimum-letters-after-break
    Value:       <number>
    Initial:     1
    Inherited:   yes
    Applies to:  all elements
    Percentages: N/A

Limit the shortest syllables after/before which a word may be
hyphenated. Typical values are 2 and 3.

    Property:    line-breaking
    Value:       normal | strict
    Initial:     normal
    Inherited:   yes
    Applies to:  all elements
    Percentages: N/A

Determines two levels of line breaking rules for ideographic scripts:
'strict' keeps more pairs of characters together than 'normal'.




References to earlier discussions:

  - http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-html/1997Apr/0085.html

    About soft hyphens and hyphenation dictionaries.

  - http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-style/1997Apr/0152.html
  - http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-html/1997Apr/0204.html

    Split off from the above thread, about hyphenation dictionaries
    and how to find or select them, and about mark-up for hyphenation
    exceptions. (Partly cross-posted between www-style and www-html.)



 

Bert
-- 
  Bert Bos                                ( W 3 C ) http://www.w3.org/
  http://www.w3.org/people/bos/                              W3C/INRIA
  bert@w3.org                             2004 Rt des Lucioles / BP 93
  +33 (0)4 92 38 76 92            06902 Sophia Antipolis Cedex, France

Received on Thursday, 26 November 1998 13:05:48 UTC