Re: lynx-dev Special Hyphen

[Michael Warner]

On Tue, Aug 18, 1998, Al Gilman <address@hidden> wrote:

> to follow up on what Jason F. McBrayer said:
>
> > I don't think it's supposed to line up. "&shy;" is a soft
> > hyphen; it's only supposed to be a hint as to whether a word
> > can be hyphenated at a particular point.  If a program needs
> > to hyphenate a word, it should do it at the "&shy;" and print
> > a regular hyphen there.
>
> Let's see if I understand you.  It sounds as though, if Lynx is
> not going to try to break words at syllable boundaries, that it
> can safely render "&shy;" as "" without regard for the context?

I'm not sure I understand your question, but I won't let that
stop me...

My understanding is that &shy; functions as a
pseudo-word-boundary, for purposes of breaking lines too long for
the screen width, thus avoiding a short line before a long word
(as in the first two lines of this paragraph).  So as far as lynx
is concerned, breaking at a &shy; wouldn't be breaking the word
at a syllable boundary, but at a word boundary.

So, if you're asking if, since lynx doesn't break lines at
syllable boundaries, it can ignore &shy;, I would say no.

Am I close?

-- 
Michael Warner 
<address@hidden>