On 5 elo, 22:43, Masayuki Nakano <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> > 4. DEGREE SIGN is not breakable if after character is character class. But
> > it's
> > still breakable if after character is numeric, for compatibility.
Could you give an example where it was actually helpful to allow a
degree sign to break if followed by a numeric character? I'd rather
not allow any odd line breaks if it wasn't clear what the benefits
were, even if we weren't able to come by any examples where it could
cause confusion. Just that we haven't thought about it here doesn't
prove that it can't occur in some more or less specific situation in
some natural or non-natural language.
Actually, each example where an unconventional line break improves the
typographical appearance is also an example where it may cause
confusion, since for a Western reader it's kind of natural to assume a
space there. The same goes for allowing breaks at curly backets,
semicolons etc. Thus, for each exception, we should consider carefully
whether the typographical benefits really overweight the danger of
confusing some users.
We should also keep in mind that the consistent line breaking
principles in Latin scripts sometimes allowed characters to be used
even in unconventional ways. For example, occasionally the company
name Microsoft is written in sarcastic tone with '$' instead of 's':
Micro$oft. In a similar fashion, a Finnish magazine called Voima
('Force') likes to replace the 'i' in its logo with '!': Vo!ma. The
swapped characters look similar enough that the reader is assumed to
be able to recognize the word even though there is basically a
spelling error in it. Personally, I'm not a great fan of this kind of
character swapping, but it could be considered unfortunate if an
unexpected break destroyed the (supposedly clever) idea that the
writer tried to express.
> > 5. The hyphen is not breakable if the text doesn't have character class, or
> > next is numeric class. Therefore, we cannot break 2007-Aug-07
Do you mean that the string '2007-Aug-07' is not breakable at all, or
that it is breakable only before 'Aug'?
Not breaking dates at all may be a good idea in itself, but I would
consider it more important to allow at least some kind of breaks in
long chemical names, such as '2-bromo-4,4-dichlorophenol'. It may be
difficult to have it both ways.
> foo/bar
> /foo2
> /bar2/
>
> each separated words always have '/', and only '/' lines are not there.
Yes, this looks good (or at least as good a compromise as is
attainable). It is an important point that a break is not allowed
before the _ending_ slash so that it cannot end up widowed on the next
line.
--
Simo Kaupinmäki
_______________________________________________
dev-tech-layout mailing list
dev-tech-layout@lists.mozilla.org
https://lists.mozilla.org/listinfo/dev-tech-layout
