[whatwg] Hyphenation

Tue Jan 9 05:03:04 PST 2007

On 1/8/07, Øistein E.  Andersen <html5 at xn--istein-9xa.com> wrote:
> Currently, hyphenation and justification are scarce on the Web

Is there any browser support for automatic hyphenation?

> and the average
> blogger hardly misses these features.

Hyphenation is a presentational problem. When you copy hyphenated
text, you want the non-hyphenated version in the clipboard. We should
avoid embedding presentational hyphenation tags in the actual text.

I would suggest that the first priority is getting a naive hyphenator
into browsers. Since you only ever need hyphenation when
full-justifying, I would suggest:

align: hyphenated;

Once that is in place, we can start thinking about special cases. I
would suggest a hyphenation dictionary in the <head> of the document.

<html>
<head>
  <title>Monkey grooming</title>

  <hyph word="zoëven" points="zo-even, zoë-ven">
  <hyph word="abstain" points="ab-stain">
  <hyph word="quality" points="qua-li-ty">
  <hyph word="hypertext" points="hy-per-text">
  <hyph word="indefatigably" points="in-de-fa-ti-ga-bly">
</head>
<body>
<p style="align:hyphenate; width:5em;">
The zoëven hypertext must abstain from grooming monkeys in an
indefatigably questionable fashion. The zoëven hypertext must abstain
from grooming monkeys in an indefatigably questionable fashion. The
zoëven hypertext must abstain from grooming monkeys in an
indefatigably questionable fashion.
</p>
</body>
</html>

Thus, when people dislike the naive hyphenation of a word, they can
specify one of their liking in the header.

-- 
Leons Petrazickis