RE: [css3-text] Proposed pruning & scoping of hyphenation properties

Hi Christian,

--Original Message--:
>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: fantasai [mailto:fantasai.lists@inkedblade.net]
>> Sent: Tuesday, March 29, 2011 8:43 PM
>> To: Christian Stockwell
>> Cc: www-style@w3.org
>> Subject: Re: [css3-text] Proposed pruning & scoping of hyphenation
>> properties
>> 
>> On 03/29/2011 08:15 PM, Christian Stockwell wrote:
>> >
>> >>> 1. I think that adding "hyphenate" to "word-wrap" is a mistake.
>> >>> I expect that real world usage of word-wrap is low and the use case
>> >>> for word-wrap: hyphenate is-at best-narrow. Since we're already in
>> >>> the realm of linguistic incorrectness we should just keep it simple
>> >>> rather than add new speculative values to the standard.
>> >>
>> >> What makes you say that word-wrap: hyphenate is in the realm of
>> >> linguistic incorrectness? It was proposed precisely to preserve
>> >> linguistic correctness while avoiding overflow.
>> >
>> > I think that in the context of the English language there are levels
>> > of linguistic correctness in the context of hyphenation. If that were
>> > not the case then there would be no need for a hyphenation resource at
>> > all, as we'd consider "append", "a-ppend", and "ap-pend" to be equally
>> > acceptable.
>> >
>> > The reality is that those two hyphenated versions of "append" are not
>> > equal.. Most readers would not give the latter version a passing
>> > glance if encountered at the end of a line, whereas the former would
>> > likely cause a reader to stumble. ...
>> 
>> Isn't the hyphenation dictionary supposed to take care of that?
>I don't follow. What is the hyphenation dictionary supposed to take care of here? Perhaps it would help to describe an expected use case for "word-wrap: hyphenate" and how it would relate to usage of "hyphens".

Fantasai meant that the hyphenation dictionary would not mark the position
after 'a' in 'a-ppend' as a possible hyphenation point.

Dictionary or rule-based hyphenation algorithms would never make that position
breakable and so, no hyphenation would occur.

word-wrap: hyphenate

is telling the user agent to apply sensible hyphenation rules if required to
fit the lines of text. There is no implied requirement to break words at the
end of line if such a break would read badly.

Dictionaries are only one way hyphenation is performed, and in rule based
systems you'd find that breaking after a vowel at the start of a word is
forbidden in English at least.

Alex
P.S. The monks that came up with hyphenation hundreds of years ago would be rolling
in their graves right now at the suggestion they didn't understand linguistic
correctness...

Received on Wednesday, 30 March 2011 04:43:09 UTC