[comp.text.tex] TeX hypenation

andy@juno.caltech.edu (Andy Fyfe) (06/12/90)

I was a bit sloppy when I made the required version of latex needed
to print the fontsel reprint from TUGboat -- I forgot to set
\righthypenmin and \lefthyphenmin (I'm using TeX 3.0).  TeX did some
interesting hyphenation -- my favourites are "al-l" and "selec-t".

Setting the above two variables fixes these hypenation errors.  However,
I have a question.  Given that the document is set in a sans-serif font,
the word "all" appears to be shorter in length than "al-", so why would
TeX even bother to hyphenate when the result is longer?  In the other
case, I think the "t" is no wider than the "-" but it's close.  Or is it
a matter of not worrying about something that couldn't possibly happen?

Andy Fyfe		andy@csvax.caltech.edu	wjafyfe@caltech.bitnet
			andy@cit-vax.UUCP	(...!ames!elroy!cit-vax!andy)

wsinpdb@lso.win.tue.nl (Paul de Bra) (06/14/90)

In article <1990Jun11.223352.20248@laguna.ccsf.caltech.edu> andy@juno.caltech.edu (Andy Fyfe) writes:
>...
>I have a question.  Given that the document is set in a sans-serif font,
>the word "all" appears to be shorter in length than "al-", so why would
>TeX even bother to hyphenate when the result is longer?  In the other
>case, I think the "t" is no wider than the "-" but it's close.  Or is it
>a matter of not worrying about something that couldn't possibly happen?

Contrary to troff and other programs, TeX tries to optimize the spacing in
an entire paragraph. Moving one letter to the next line may improve that
next line. This may explain why TeX chooses to use this hyphenation.


Paul.
(debra@research.att.com)