[sword-devel] Soft hyphens

[DM Smith]

I see your point. For them to be useful, every word should have a soft hyphens between syllables (or intra-word semantic breaks). Not just some. It is just as likely in a dynamic word wrap of a browser (or other etext viewer) whose width can change that any word but the first few on a line will be at the end of a line in some width/font-size combination. Having some words and not others gives a surprising hyphenated text. Removing soft hyphens to solve a presentation issue is appropriate.

Recently, I saw a web page that split and hyphenated words dynamically and I’m pretty sure that the words didn’t have soft hyphens.

Still, it is the responsibility of the engine to ensure that search works properly. As you’ll probably note, the zero width non joiner is better than a soft hyphen in preventing ligatures. One is semantically correct. The other gives an appropriate visual representation. We need to use the right tools for each job. Removing soft hyphens to improve search is at best a stop gap measure.

In Him,
	DM

> On Nov 2, 2017, at 4:50 PM, David Haslam <dfhmch at googlemail.com> wrote:
> 
> Having soft hyphens to improve readability on hand held small devices is fine
> in theory, but it's not in practice. 
> 
> The more I've thought about soft hyphens, the more I've understood that
> their use was a kludge for a particular typesetting task at one time for
> publishing a printed Bible from Quark Xpress.
> 
> They have no significance outside that context.
> 
> That you can have the same word occur with and without a soft hyphen
> illustrates the point. They have no semantic significance.
> 
> Were the same Bible needed to be typeset with a different page size or
> layout, then the whole task would need to be done again differently in the
> desktop publishing suite.
> 
> I therefore have come to the view that all soft hyphens should be removed
> from the USFM files.
> 
> If in future the USFM files are repurposed by others to make a printed Bible
> or PDF edition, then it becomes the responsibility of the licensed publisher
> to ensure that the layout doesn't break Lingala words in an unnatural way at
> the end of a line.
> 
> Likewise, to be of use in a module, the soft hyphens would need to be
> applied consistently to every word capable of being wordwrapped, not
> haphazardly to only those words that merely happened to be at the end of a
> line of text in the page layout for the original printed edition.
> 
> [That's responding to Michael's point.]
> 
> NB. The matter is also being pursued in context in Fr Cyrille's LinVB repo
> on GitLab.
> 
> Does anyone know of any other SWORD module that contains soft hyphens?
> 
> Or is this the first time and context where this topic has come up?
> 
> Obtaining soft hyphen consistency is achievable in two ways.
> 1. Low effort - just remove 'em all.
> 2. Labour intensive - generate a full words list, analyse for soft hyphens,
> and then apply soft hyphens to those matching words still lacking them.
> 
> Best regards,
> 
> David
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> --
> Sent from: http://sword-dev.350566.n4.nabble.com/
> 
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