All about SHYness - Soft Hyphenation - [SHY] U+00AD

[Elbrecht]

Hi Henry -

I am running US OS/apps on my German MacBook only - so all is fine with me. But there is no way to get German text justified, in a way that pleases me, within NWP - but not to (be forced to) justify is so much more pleasing anyway: state of art with best fonts available...

Cheers Elbrecht

[Kino]

So, if you want hyphenation to be correct in non-English languages you should find a way to hack a hyphenation definition file.

I bet you cannot. They are the same as hyphen.tex created for and used by TeX, just split into two files. As something equivalent is available for many other languages, Apple should have added those pattern files if they could. I.e. if they could make AppKit understand them -- probably with latex notations converted to real character code. Then, we should have a hyphen break menu in the Intl Pref pane, something similar to the sort order menu. Maybe in Snow Leopard?...

Except that perhaps some UK English users would be tempted to replace the content of the files in AppKit with that of ukhyphen.tex which may work since it does not contain any special notation. Personally I'll never suggest to alter a system file, though.

Also this would mean that Cocoa text engine fails to hyphenate some words properly even in US English. And it fails. 500 or 600 words are known as such, "adrenaline", "manuscript", "poltergeist", etc.

[rwg]

I have been following this thread with some interest, and I hope it will not be considered out of place to mention that Mellel comes with hyphenation files for more than twenty languages. But perhaps it can do this because it uses its own text engine. These files can also be easily modified, and this is in fact one of the reasons that I prefer to use Mellel rather than Nisus for any writing (as opposed to editing). It also by and large obviates the need for soft hyphenation (unless of course you are too lazy to modify the hyphenation file ).

Rolf

[Groucho]

Mellel comes with hyphenation files for more than twenty languages.

That is my hope about NW. I do believe Nisus will eventually sell some third-party hyphenation dictionary, in bundle or separately. Even now you can use Spell Catcher or CocoASpell… cocoAspell… or what you spell it.

Cheers, Henry.

[Elbrecht]

Hi all -

just to get SHY up in the sky again - it does work with me... Anyone else?

HE

EDIT: OK - just to give you an idea what my German Extended Keyboard looks like - I dropped the two French deadkeys no more needed with my German Extended keyboard and substituted this way:

http://www.elbrecht.com/sirfonts/GermanExtended.pdf

# # #

exCircumflex [§]  sir
Shift [±]   NonBreakingSPace
Option ʾ hamza
OptionShift ʿ ain

exAccents [=] @ at
Shift [+] ­ SoftHYphen
Option  Jcaron
OptionShift  Hlinebelow

hyphenMinus [/] - HyphenMinus
Shift [?] ‑ NonBreakingHyphen
Option – enDash
OptionShift — emDash

# # #

Notes:
0) with "Shift" special "Spaces" and "Hyphen" are readily available all the time.
1) NonBreakingSPace [NBSP] and SoftHYpen [SHY] are invisible - but still detectable with UnicodeChecker.
2) "sir", "Jcaron" and "Hlinebelow" are special charaters only available with my font(s) installed.
3) for your orientation in [brackets] the positions on "U.S." and "U.S. Extended" Keyboards.