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From: wmartin@brl-tgr.ARPA (Will Martin )
Newsgroups: net.internat
Subject: Re: Hyphenation (Long message)
Message-ID: <3353@brl-tgr.ARPA>
Date: Mon, 18-Nov-85 15:39:51 EST
Article-I.D.: brl-tgr.3353
Posted: Mon Nov 18 15:39:51 1985
Date-Received: Tue, 19-Nov-85 06:03:27 EST
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Actually, it seems to me that you are using this hyphenation difficulty
in the wrong way. Instead of going to great lengths to overcome it, you
could instead use it as a tool to eliminate the bad and noxious practice
of hyphenation itself! As more and more text-production facilities
become computerized, any restraints and limitations imposed by the
computerization will become de facto industry standards. So those who
want hyphenated text for justified right margins or whatever other
reasons could eventually become segregated into the manual-production
part of the field, IF you people, who are the ones that make
computerized hyphenation possible, will simply stick together against it!

There is NO *real* reason to hyphenate words to split them across lines;
it is merely a convention, established over hundreds of years by the
printing establishment. We have a chance here to overcome this hidebound
and annoying custom, and establish instead either variable spacing for
justified right margins, or, better yet, settle on irregular right
margins as the new standard.

Don't cooperate! Instead of making an effort to get the machines to do
what the people say they want, instead expend that same effort to
convince the people that they need no longer indulge in the antiquated
custom of hyphenating at all. And if no computer types do the bidding of
those wanting hyphenation, it will simply die out as the computerized
text-handling becomes ubiquitous. (You don't spend effort to get the
trailing "s" character to print like "f", do you? Treat hyphenation the
same way!)

Will

(If you hadn't guessed by now, I am against hyphenation, and never do it
myself. :-)