If you were to handwrite, say, "and/or" at the end of the line, you would write "and/" on one line and "or" on the next. No word processing package I've played with does this. This is not much of a problem for "and/or", but it leads to serious formatting discombobulations with longer combinations, both in word processors and on web sites.

I suppose this is really not a half-baked idea, but more a missing feature in most word processing and other computer programs. Even Word doesn't get it right.

(The only place where this might cause problems is with fractions, but it is easy enough to distinguish between numbers and letters.)
-- DrCurry, Mar 09 2003

(+) for using the word discombobulations.
-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, Mar 09 2003


Adobe FrameMaker can do this. In fact, you can specify any number of characters to act as a word-breaking point -- I've just tried adding "a" to the list and it works (but looks decidedly weird).
-- probert, Mar 11 2003


What I'd like to see would be settable "primary" and "secondary" (possibly also tertiary) line-break characters with programmable threshholds. The software should first try to flow the text using only primary word breaks; if it flows very badly, then selectively use secondary word breaks if those will improve it.
-- supercat, Mar 11 2003


has egbert gone pro?
-- yamahito, Mar 11 2003


Alas, the shame of it! Walking the streets at such a tender age!
-- dalek, Mar 11 2003


I'll vote for any idea that contains the word 'discombobulations'. Does that make me a cheap whore? yes. Do I care? No.
-- sambwiches, Mar 11 2003


eah, for the purpose you want, simply add a space at before and after. If you want it to look the same, make it a 1point space. basically a pixel ;)
-- JackandJohn, Mar 11 2003


Clearly a good suggestion when you are typesetting your own document(s), but not much use for general purpose text displayed in browsers, for example.
-- DrCurry, Mar 14 2003


Maybe it's good that someone is "bored/anal" enough to think of this stuff because if they left it up to people like me, nothing would get done. I'll give it a bun for being so observative.
-- Pac-man, Feb 07 2006


Sounds useful to me. At least it should be an option!
-- phundug, Feb 07 2006



random, halfbakery