[xep-support] preventing line breaks before punctuation

[W. Eliot Kimber]

Geoff Levner wrote:
> I just discovered that Antenna House has an XSL extension for dealing 
> with this situation in its XSL Formatter 
> (axf:space-before-punctuation).  So presumably it is not handled by 
> standard XSL, nor by XEP...

The FO specification leaves the details of line breaking to 
implementations. That means that implementations are free to do as was 
suggested here and implement language-specific breaking rules or, as 
Antenna House has done, provide a proprietary feature for it.

I don't think it's unreasonable to expect a composition engine to do 
language-specific things but it's also difficult for implementors to 
know what the details are for each language.

However, I also know that the line casting algorithms that any 
composition system will use are by their nature complex and it may not 
be easy to add something like a rule that says "if language is {any 
language that uses French typographic conventions} treat space before 
{relevant punctuation character} as non-breaking space".

I would think that this is something that can be addressed fairly well 
in the initial FO generation process even if you'd rather not have to do 
so and doing so will likely slow down the transform (because you have to 
examine most, if not all, text nodes in the input document).

Cheers,

Eliot

-- 
W. Eliot Kimber
Professional Services
Innodata Isogen
9390 Research Blvd, #410
Austin, TX 78759
(214) 954-5198

ekimber at innodata-isogen.com
www.innodata-isogen.com

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