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What should be done with hyphenation and indeed breaking paragraphs into lines in general is largely just undefined. There are mild movements from time to time,

What should be done with hyphenation and indeed breaking paragraphs into lines in general is largely just undefined. There are mild movements from time to time, but overall no one’s sufficiently interested in implementing the really good stuff, so we’re left with the simple, easy and bad that everyone has grown used to. I’m glad to say that Chromium has just shipped `text-wrap: balance`, which is at least one step in directions of goodness. I hold out hope that some day some browser will implement a `text-wrap: pretty` backed by something like Knuth-Plass. https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=630181 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=630181 is relevant, shows that some thought has gone into how it could be achieved in Firefox. And while talking of hyphenation, what happens if you try to hyphenate in the middle of what would otherwise be a ligature? e.g. at “af-fable”. Alas, in this instance no one has got really enthusiastic about fixing it in Firefox: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=479829 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=479829, you get the ﬀ glyph split in half, much like the mixed-colour handling shown in this article.

taeric 3y ago
Amusingly, folks usually seem hesitant to go with justified due to fears of "rivers" in the text. I can't claim that won't happen, but it seems largely overblown in concerns. Picking "affable" was an incredible nerd snipe! I would have split the syllables wrong on that, as I have yet to convince myself that I pronounce "fa" in the middle there. Similar problems come in when you have words that hyphenate differently depending on their use.
- chrismorgan 3y ago
  Hyphenation points are a funny thing. People would commonly go for “aff-able” (aff-a-ble), but in such cases, you tend to get better results for reading by splitting in the middle of the repeated letter, or more generally the consonant sequence (af-fa-ble). I’m not certain if this is to do with phonemes (that is, the hyphenation matching how you speak) or to do with aiding with continuing (simply making it easier for you to pick up on the next line); I’ve thought about it a little, but not that much. There’s a similar but more aggressive form of the problem in lyrics on sheet music, where you’re declaring a hyphenation point between all syllables (though good engraving will avoid placing unnecessary hyphens), and people often break syllables incorrectly or suboptimally. Pulling up one score I noticed this with when I received it last week or so, some examples: strang-ers, runn-ing, en-em-y, anch-or, surr-end-er. I’d split (or hyphenate) them as stran-gers, run-ning, en-e-my, an-chor, sur-ren-der. I’m not certain if I’d always hyphenate and lyrics-syllable-break in the same places, but in the cases I’ve contemplated I would, though I had to think about sur-ren-der versus sur-rend-er for a moment. Also I can’t say exactly why my mind lighted on the word “affable” (it was the second word my mind came to, after I discarded “affiance”), but you made me think about it more deliberately and then I was curious to see what the first word in a dictionary would be. In my /usr/share/dict/words, the first (excluding proper nouns) is “affability”. (The last is “whiffs”, with “whiffletrees” as the last word I’d maybe consider hyphenating between the fs.)

taeric 3y ago

Amusingly, folks usually seem hesitant to go with justified due to fears of "rivers" in the text. I can't claim that won't happen, but it seems largely overblown in concerns. Picking "affable" was an incredible nerd snipe! I would have split the syllables wrong on that, as I have yet to convince myself that I pronounce "fa" in the middle there. Similar problems come in when you have words that hyphenate differently depending on their use.

chrismorgan 3y ago
Hyphenation points are a funny thing. People would commonly go for “aff-able” (aff-a-ble), but in such cases, you tend to get better results for reading by splitting in the middle of the repeated letter, or more generally the consonant sequence (af-fa-ble). I’m not certain if this is to do with phonemes (that is, the hyphenation matching how you speak) or to do with aiding with continuing (simply making it easier for you to pick up on the next line); I’ve thought about it a little, but not that much. There’s a similar but more aggressive form of the problem in lyrics on sheet music, where you’re declaring a hyphenation point between all syllables (though good engraving will avoid placing unnecessary hyphens), and people often break syllables incorrectly or suboptimally. Pulling up one score I noticed this with when I received it last week or so, some examples: strang-ers, runn-ing, en-em-y, anch-or, surr-end-er. I’d split (or hyphenate) them as stran-gers, run-ning, en-e-my, an-chor, sur-ren-der. I’m not certain if I’d always hyphenate and lyrics-syllable-break in the same places, but in the cases I’ve contemplated I would, though I had to think about sur-ren-der versus sur-rend-er for a moment. Also I can’t say exactly why my mind lighted on the word “affable” (it was the second word my mind came to, after I discarded “affiance”), but you made me think about it more deliberately and then I was curious to see what the first word in a dictionary would be. In my /usr/share/dict/words, the first (excluding proper nouns) is “affability”. (The last is “whiffs”, with “whiffletrees” as the last word I’d maybe consider hyphenating between the fs.)