[net.text] hyphenation

djmolny@wnuxb.UUCP (Ron Heiby) (08/22/84)

I am using nroff and mm macros to format a "Memorandum for File" type of
document.  As the first line, I have specified ".nh", thinking to turn off
hyphenation.  However, nroff thinks that any place I have a hyphenated word
is fair game to split accross line boundaries.  Would someone please mail
me a note telling me how I have mis-read the manual and how to tell nroff
to leave words like "mis-read" intact (not split).  Thanks.
Ron Heiby   ihnp4!wnuxa!heiby

olson@fortune.UUCP (08/24/84)

#R:wnuxb:-22100:fortune:28700002:000:259
fortune!olson    Aug 23 13:28:00 1984

The only unconditionally successful method I have ever found is to
do something like
.tr [-
and then use [ everywhere there is a hyphen in the document.
(I usually just put in the hyphens and then do a global substitution
before running it thru nroff).
	Dave

djmolny@wnuxb.UUCP (Ron Heiby) (08/30/84)

I found a couple of free minutes, so tried the trick of using "\-" for the
"-" instead of preceeding the word with "\%" and it worked for me on AT&T
System V Unix.  Ron.  ihnp4!wnuxa!heiby.

djmolny@wnuxb.UUCP (Ron Heiby) (09/04/84)

I have received a number of responses to my query.  Thank you all very
much.  Several suggested that I use the ".tr" command to fake out
nroff into using a different character where I want a "-", which will
happen after the hyphenation operations.  A couple of notes (like
this one) pointed out how I mis-read the manual.  (Not the most
intuitive, but close.)

> ".nh" only turns off automatic hyphenation, i.e., "nroff"/"troff" inserting
> hyphenations into words not explicitly hyphenated.  To turn off hyphenation
> on a word, put "\%" at the beginning.  Read section 13, "Hyphenation", in
> the NROFF/TROFF User's Manual, where this is all stated explicitly.
> 
> 	Guy Harris
> 	{seismo,ihnp4,allegra}!rlgvax!guy

One suggested that using "\-" instead of "-" might work.  That sounds good
to me, but I haven't tried it yet, since getting the "\%word-word" solution.
Thanks again.  Ron Heiby.  ihnp4!wnuxa!heiby.

gwyn@brl-tgr.UUCP (09/05/84)

Hey!  \- is a minus sign in the current font, not a hyphen.