Hebrew word breaks at end of line character

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markjulie
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Hebrew word breaks at end of line character

Post by markjulie »

I am typing text into a document in Mellel 4. When a Hebrew word reaches the end of a line, the word breaks at the letter that reached the end of the line instead of wrapping the word to the next line as it does with with English. Is there a setting I am missing that forces word wrap in Hebrew? The behavior resembles resizing a Terminal or Emacs window that does not preserve word integrity. The document in question will be exported to epub or other digital format and needs to allow a paragraph to resize its width until the line break (as it would in html), so I am trying to avoid adding line breaks or formatting that may not export.

Mark
jannuss
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Re: Hebrew word breaks at end of line character

Post by jannuss »

I've never seen such strange behavior with Hebrew.

A little more information please:
-- is this the only document with this behavior or do all your Hebrew documents have the problem?
-- is this a Hebrew [left-ti-right] document or is the Hebrew embedded in English [right-to-left] text?
-- what font(s)/keyboard(s) are you using?
-- is Hebrew your main font or secondary font [with script is to Hebrew]?
-- have you turned on hyphenation as part of the paragraph style definition?
-- have you set a Hebrew hyphenation dictionary?

Janet
markjulie
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Re: Hebrew word breaks at end of line character

Post by markjulie »

I can create the odd behavior in a Hebrew only RTL doc, but it behaves moderately better. I am using Biblical Hebrew-TIRO with Ezra SIL. The initial question was in an English document with Hebrew as secondary but typing a paragraph that was all Hebrew. I just turned on hyphenation and set עברית as the dictionary. I have Hebrew as the associated character style for Body.

I don't know how to set a Hebrew hyphenation dictionary correctly. SO I still get odd hyphenation, but it is less in Hebrew-only.

On another note, I am using an academic template with styleset. Would I avoid some problems if I used a default template and customized the styles as I needed them?

Mark
jannuss
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Re: Hebrew word breaks at end of line character

Post by jannuss »

OK, Mark, several things

First, just my opinion, unless you really need to cram a lot of text into a small space, hyphenation in Hebrew is unnecessary. I hardly ever see it used except in the newspaper.

Now, to your specific issue
1. The problem shouldn't be associated with the kind of general style set you are using, but rather with the particular settings for hyphenation.

2. The hyphenation dictionary appears to be built-in -- see Mellel/preferences/hyphenation -- but you can customize it.

3. I suspect we will find the problem in the paragraph style settings. If you click custom minimum under hyphenation, you get the default values
word length = 5
before hype = 2
after hyphen = 2
hypenation limit = 3
hyphenation zone = 0 [has to do with space padding on the line; not sure how to use this]
With these minimums, very few Hebrew words will ever be hyphenated.

If the style rules for the paper you are writing allows if, I would simply turn off hyphenation for Hebrew paragraphs.
If not, I would play with the custom minimums to prevent hyphenating single letters and short words.

Janet
markjulie
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Re: Hebrew word breaks at end of line character

Post by markjulie »

Janet,

I am getting the same performance with hyphenation either on (with customization) or off completely. I do not find any solutions in documentation for Mellel Hyphenation Lab. If I resize the font, whatever characters fill the width of the line wrap to the next without regard to the placement in the word. I have played with every combination of hyphenation settings on/off/customized and cannot eliminate the behavior. Other suggestions? I am proceeding with hyphenation off but this is a major glitch (I don't think a bug). I will try anything--routine or off the wall.
jannuss
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Re: Hebrew word breaks at end of line character

Post by jannuss »

Mark, if I understand you correctly, you are seeing hyphenation of single Hebrew characters even when you have the custom limits set to the defaults
word length = 5
before hype = 2
after hyphen = 2
If that's the case, then what we have here is a bug, plain and simple.

Send a bug report and sample document to support at redlers.
[Many businesses here are closed for the SUCCOT holiday, so you may not hear back from them until next week.]

Janet
markjulie
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Re: Hebrew word breaks at end of line character

Post by markjulie »

Working on the bug report, I observed interesting behavior. I copied and pasted Genesis 1:1 and 1:2 from Accordance BHS text into the same document that I have been using. It maintains its expected proper word wrap when placed in a Mellel table which I resized. Likewise, when I copy text from Sefaria.org and paste into Mellel, no matter how large I resize the font or how wide the line in the document, the text wraps appropriately.

חג שמח
Mark
jannuss
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Re: Hebrew word breaks at end of line character

Post by jannuss »

This behavior isn't surprising. It arrives with its own paragraph style which probably has hyphenation turned off.
As I said, there is rarely a need to hyphenate Hebrew text.

Janet
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