[Tex/LaTex] Display hyphenation options for a specific word

hyphenationloggingtex-core

When TeX produces Overfull box, is puts something like this in the log:

Overfull \hbox (15.47195pt too wide) in paragraph at lines 7--9
[]\OT1/cmr/m/n/10 I re-ally re-ally want to get dis-played the op-tions for 
hy-phen-ation xxxxxxxxxxxxxx |

I would like a macro \showhyphens that would for an entry like \showhyphens{hyphenation} display its hyphenation options, i.e. hy-phen-ation. This should be displayed either in the document (preferred) or in the log.

(Background: I need this for sumbitting a paper that contains many multi-part words and similar stuff like $(2,3)$-representation etc. I know that there are ways to modify - with \discretionary to make the word breakable, but it makes the code extremly unreadable and I'm not allowed to make this a macro definition.)

Best Answer

Bing! Your wish has been granted.

Seriously: \showhyphens already exists under that exact same name.

Related Solutions

[Tex/LaTex] Prevent global hyphenation for a specific word

Quoting the TeXbook, p. 452:

\hyphenation{man-u-script man-u-scripts ap-pen-dix}
[...] tells TeX how to hypenate the words 'manuscript' , 'manuscripts', and 'appendix'. Notice that both singular and plural forms of 'manuscript' were entered, since the exception dictionary affects hyphenation only when a word agrees completely with an exceptional entry.

In other words, the answer to your question is to enter both Byte and Byte-strom into the exception list.

\documentclass[a5paper]{article}
\usepackage[german]{babel}
\hyphenation{Byte Byte-strom}
\begin{document}
Trying to determine how a special word is hyphenated: Bytestrom.
\end{document}

enter image description here

[Tex/LaTex] Add hyphenation pattern for word with special characters

Taking Daи's pointer in the first comment, hyphenation next to a parenthesis, and going to David's Carlisle's answer, reveals that one need not use macros (Mico's suggestion) to accomplish the task. Indeed, hyphenation can even occur within the parentheses, as shown in the last example.

\documentclass{article}
\lccode`\(`\(
\lccode`\)`\)
\lccode`\[`\[
\lccode`\]`\]

\hyphenation{chro-mium-(III)}
\hyphenation{lam-bic-(Bel-gian)} 

\setlength\textwidth{1mm} % just for this example
\begin{document}

. chromium(III) % start with some character b/c pdflatex doesn't hyphenate the first word of a paragraph

. lambic(Belgian)

\end{document}

enter image description here

At that answer, when Lover of Structure asked "Do your first four commands have side effects?", David replied

"yes they make ()[] letters for the hyphenation algorithm so (foobar) will be looked up as the 8 letter word (foobar) not the 6 letter word foobar, this can affect hyphenation all over. But if you restrict it to areas just containing technical constructs it's probably ok as natural language hyphenation patterns are not always appropriate there anyway."

I should add (Steven talking again) that David's words "affect hyphenation all over" should not be taken to mean "prevent hyphenation of parenthesized words not specifically set with a hyphenation pattern." In the following MWE, we see that the \lccode definitions do not prevent the hyphenation of words enclosed in parentheses:

\documentclass{article}
\lccode`\(`\(
\lccode`\)`\)
\lccode`\[`\[
\lccode`\]`\]

\setlength\textwidth{1in} % just for this example
\begin{document}
Testing (calisthenics)

Testing calisthenics 
\end{document}

enter image description here

Best Answer

Related Solutions

[Tex/LaTex] Prevent global hyphenation for a specific word

[Tex/LaTex] Add hyphenation pattern for word with special characters

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