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From: icking@gmdzi.gmd.de (Werner Icking)
Newsgroups: comp.text.tex
Subject: Re: LaTeX: Hyphenation Problem
Message-ID: <4957@gmdzi.gmd.de>
Date: 20 Jun 91 10:52:51 GMT
References: <1991Jun13.070121.1906@sserve.cc.adfa.oz.au> <1991Jun14.143616.776@lsl.co.uk> <1991Jun14.191028.14533@fys.ruu.nl> <1991Jun18.095110.781@lsl.co.uk>
Organization: GMD, St. Augustin, F.R. Germany
Lines: 42

robin@lsl.co.uk (Robin Fairbairns) writes:

>In article <1991Jun14.191028.14533@fys.ruu.nl>, spit@fys.ruu.nl (Werenfried Spit) writes:
>> In <1991Jun14.143616.776@lsl.co.uk> robin@lsl.co.uk (Robin Fairbairns) writes:
>> 
>>>This is because of the jolly rules of `proper' typesetting - don't (they
>>>say) hyphenate a word that's already been explicitly hyphenated.
>> Might be, but you will have difficulties with german 
>> and dutch (and probably a lot more languages) which
>> contain too many of these words to apply this rule.

>Oh dearie me - I stand corrected.  I just don't know enough German, 
>obviously, and my Dutch is next to non-existent (there are too many good 
>speakers of English in Holland for the incentive to be strong enough).

But in this special case most German writers don't know enough German.
They often write a "-" when the rules do not allow this: black-and-white
film (sp?) Schwarz-Weiss-Film is wrong; Schwarzweissfilm is correct. And
from the view of typesetting you are completely rigth; to hyphenated a
word which already contains hyphens (dashes, "-") makes it difficult to
read. And therefor it is bad typesetting: Ich wohne in der E.-T.-A.-Hoff-
mann-Strasse --- oder gar oder gar oder gar oder gar --- der Giro-d'Ita-
lia-Gewinner erhaelt ...

>Am I to understand that this is another instance in which TeX is 
>not-quite-perfect for the non English-speaking world?  Oh woe!

Yes, and the first indication for me was already in the TeX-book just where
Knuth wants to show that TeX may be used for non-english languages, too.
The Hungarian names are written with incorrect accents!

Hope, that my english is not worse than TeX for non-english languages :-)
-- 
Werner Icking          icking@gmdzi.gmd.de          (+49 2241) 14-2443
Gesellschaft fuer Mathematik und Datenverarbeitung mbH (GMD)
Schloss Birlinghoven, P.O.Box 1240, D-5205 Sankt Augustin 1, FRGermany
                                  "Der Dativ ist dem Genitiv sein Tod."
-- 
Werner Icking          icking@gmdzi.gmd.de          (+49 2241) 14-2443
Gesellschaft fuer Mathematik und Datenverarbeitung mbH (GMD)
Schloss Birlinghoven, P.O.Box 1240, D-5205 Sankt Augustin 1, FRGermany
                                  "Der Dativ ist dem Genitiv sein Tod."