Soft hyphen doesn't show

[Pierre]

Hello,

Apparently, soft hyphenating doesn't work. If I add a soft hyphen in the middle of the word "information", I get "infor" (no hyphen) at the end of the line and "mation" at the beginning of the next line. It's the same problem on paper. It's like it were two words, "infor" and "mation".

Thank you in advance for your help.

I use Mac OS 10.9.1.

Cheers, Pierre

[martin]

One quick thing to check: do you have hyphenation enabled? Please check under the menu View > Hyphenation.

[Pierre]

Thank you for your answer, Martin.

Hyphenation had to be disabled because it often creates breaks at the wrong place. For instance, the word "programme" could become "program-" and "me", which is not allowed in French (the language I usually use).

[martin]

Unfortunately one cannot enable hyphenation just for soft hyphens, but still have automatic hyphenation disabled– they are either enabled or disabled together. I know we have this filed as an enhancement request, and I'll add your vote.

For instance, the word "programme" could become "program-" and "me", which is not allowed in French (the language I usually use)

I'll have to check on this incorrect automatic hyphenation. We just worked on improving non-English hyphenation for the last update, and it would be good if French worked nicely too. Do you have any other examples of poor French hyphenation in NWP?

[useeger]

By chance I found just now an example for poor German hyphenation:

k-einen
k-eineswegs

Perhaps also the following is wrong (?; just a suspicion)
k-einer
k-eine
k-einerlei
k-ein
k-einem
k-einesfalls

But German hyphanation is very much better now. Thanks!

Do you want me to report hyphenation nonsense, if I find one?

[ninjagame]

Pierre, useeger,

You might want to install the "Insert Hyphen (non breaking)" and "Insert Hyphen (soft)" macros from the macro repository's "Editing" category. Look it up at http://nisus.com/pro/macros/?activeCat=Editing.
I've done this myself (I'm also writing in German) and it allows you to insert hyphens at the places you want them.

- ninjagame

[Pierre]

Ninjagame, thank you very much, I shall explore your solution.

Martin, here are other examples: "correspon-dent", "comman-de". The problem with these hyphenations is that the last letters of French words are often mute ("ent" in the first case and "e" in the second are silent).

Anyway, two letters cannot be separated from the rest of the word, which means that "comman-dé" would be illegal too (even though "é" is not silent).

The soft-hyphen-only hyphenation would be very useful because perfect automatic hyphenation is a difficult goal to achieve, and it is an all-or-nothing matter: French publishers accept only manuscripts written with automatic hyphenation disabled. It is a requirement.

Another solution would be to include the equivalent of the LaTeX construct mbox{} in NWP. Then we could use automatic hyphenation and block illegal breaks on a case-by-case basis.

[Groucho]

By chance I found just now an example for poor German hyphenation:

k-einen
k-eineswegs

Perhaps also the following is wrong (?; just a suspicion)
k-einer
k-eine
k-einerlei
k-ein
k-einem
k-einesfalls

As I said elsewhere, NWP need to set a hyphenation threshold. Two letters would prevent such errors. A customizable threshold would be great.

Henry