non-breaking hyphens??

[Frances Del Rio]

is there a non-breaking hyphen in HTML?? for example, so a phone no.
falls all on one line.. as in..

1-800-444-5454... (and is not broken into two lines if phone no. occurs
near end of a line..)

(searched for 'hyphen' in FAQ pg, didn't find anything..)

thank you.. Frances

[Andreas Prilop]

Re: non-breaking hyphens??

On Fri, 8 Oct 2004, Frances Del Rio wrote:
[color=blue]
> is there a non-breaking hyphen in HTML??[/color]

‑ <http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/dashes.html>
[color=blue]
> 1-800-444-5454... (and is not broken into two lines if phone no. occurs
> near end of a line..)[/color]

Write your telephone numbers in standard format (ITU E.164).
Then there should be no hyphens in your numbers.

--
M. Pirard strikes again:
<http://www.alltheweb.c om/search?q=it1s&_ sb_lang=any>
<http://www.altavista.c om/web/results?q=it1s& kgs=0&kls=0>

[Harlan Messinger]

Re: non-breaking hyphens??


"Andreas Prilop" <nhtcapri@rrz n-user.uni-hannover.de> wrote in message
news:Pine.GSO.4 .44.04100818072 10.3256-100000@s5b004.. .[color=blue]
> On Fri, 8 Oct 2004, Frances Del Rio wrote:
>[color=green]
> > is there a non-breaking hyphen in HTML??[/color]
>
> ‑ <http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/dashes.html>
>[color=green]
> > 1-800-444-5454... (and is not broken into two lines if phone no. occurs
> > near end of a line..)[/color]
>
> Write your telephone numbers in standard format (ITU E.164).
> Then there should be no hyphens in your numbers.[/color]

Probably not. On a web page for a flower shop in Davenport, Iowa, a phone
number should be written in the format commonly used by ordinary people in
Davenport, Iowa, not in a manner adopted by international commercial
concerns in Europe. Likewise, dates on a web-based calendar of events for a
church in Walla Walla are going to appear as "4/13/04, 4:30 P.M." or "April
13, 2004, at 4:30 pm". "2004-04-13 16:30" would be inappropriate.

[Jukka K. Korpela]

Re: non-breaking hyphens??

"Harlan Messinger" <h.messinger@co mcast.net> wrote:
[color=blue][color=green]
>> Write your telephone numbers in standard format (ITU E.164).
>> Then there should be no hyphens in your numbers.[/color]
>
> Probably not.[/color]

Surely not, since the standard format has no hyphens.

Oh yeah, I know you tried to refute the _first_ sentence.
[color=blue]
> On a web page for a flower shop in Davenport, Iowa, a
> phone number should be written in the format commonly used by
> ordinary people in Davenport, Iowa, not in a manner adopted by
> international commercial concerns in Europe.[/color]

Really? So you seriously think they will misunderstand, or fail to
understand, a phone number that uses standard punctuation?

The fact is that when nonstandard punctuation is used in phone numbers,
_different_ systems of punctuation are used, and the numbers become
understandable only if you look at the digits only and ignore _all_
punctuation. So you might just as well use standard punctuation, with
spaces (or no-break spaces when desired), which is the least confusing-
[color=blue]
> Likewise, dates on a
> web-based calendar of events for a church in Walla Walla are going to
> appear as "4/13/04, 4:30 P.M." or "April 13, 2004, at 4:30 pm".
> "2004-04-13 16:30" would be inappropriate.[/color]

What about all the potential visitorslike tourists and immigrants who get
very confused with American notations like 03/04/05 and have to guess
which number means which component of a date? (In the worst case, they
think they know well what it means.)

Date issues are different from phone number notations, since real
misunderstandin gs are possible with dates. The first thing to note is
that by writing the year in four digits makes virtuallu sure that the
reader gets at least the year right. :-)

--
Yucca, http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/
Pages about Web authoring: http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/www.html

[Arne]

Re: non-breaking hyphens??

Once upon a time *Harlan Messinger* wrote:
[color=blue]
> "Andreas Prilop" <nhtcapri@rrz n-user.uni-hannover.de> wrote in message
> news:Pine.GSO.4 .44.04100818072 10.3256-100000@s5b004.. .[color=green]
>> On Fri, 8 Oct 2004, Frances Del Rio wrote:
>>[color=darkred]
>> > is there a non-breaking hyphen in HTML??[/color]
>>
>> ‑ <http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/dashes.html>
>>[color=darkred]
>> > 1-800-444-5454... (and is not broken into two lines if phone no. occurs
>> > near end of a line..)[/color]
>>
>> Write your telephone numbers in standard format (ITU E.164).
>> Then there should be no hyphens in your numbers.[/color]
>
> Probably not. On a web page for a flower shop in Davenport, Iowa, a phone
> number should be written in the format commonly used by ordinary people in
> Davenport, Iowa, not in a manner adopted by international commercial
> concerns in Europe. Likewise, dates on a web-based calendar of events for a
> church in Walla Walla are going to appear as "4/13/04, 4:30 P.M." or "April
> 13, 2004, at 4:30 pm". "2004-04-13 16:30" would be inappropriate.
>[/color]

I have understand that common accepted international standards is not
accepted in U.S. :-)

2004-04-13 16:30 is very easy to understand, e.g each day (date) have 24
hours. And its not a big problem if the line braks between the date and
the time, as they are separated.

All "real" browsers don't even break the date. But we know the problem
here is IE, as with many other things.

--
/Arne

[jmm-list-gn]

Re: non-breaking hyphens??

Frances Del Rio wrote:[color=blue]
> is there a non-breaking hyphen in HTML?? for example, so a phone no.
> falls all on one line.. as in..
>
> 1-800-444-5454... (and is not broken into two lines if phone no. occurs
> near end of a line..)
>[/color]
A general approach is:
css: .nobr { white-space: nowrap; }
html: <span class="nobr">1-800-444-5454</span>

--
jmm dash list (at) sohnen-moe (dot) com
(Remove .AXSPAMGN for email)

[Sam Hughes]

Re: non-breaking hyphens??

"Jukka K. Korpela" <jkorpela@cs.tu t.fi> wrote in
news:Xns957CCF0 F77FEBjkorpelac stutfi@193.229. 0.31:
[color=blue]
> Date issues are different from phone number notations, since real
> misunderstandin gs are possible with dates. The first thing to note is
> that by writing the year in four digits makes virtuallu sure that the
> reader gets at least the year right. :-)[/color]

Why use sensible date notation when you could just dodge around the problem
with good scheduling? When your convention starts on 5/5/5, everybody
wins!

[Harlan Messinger]

Re: non-breaking hyphens??


"Jukka K. Korpela" <jkorpela@cs.tu t.fi> wrote in message
news:Xns957CCF0 F77FEBjkorpelac stutfi@193.229. 0.31...[color=blue]
> "Harlan Messinger" <h.messinger@co mcast.net> wrote:
>[color=green][color=darkred]
> >> Write your telephone numbers in standard format (ITU E.164).
> >> Then there should be no hyphens in your numbers.[/color]
> >
> > Probably not.[/color]
>
> Surely not, since the standard format has no hyphens.
>
> Oh yeah, I know you tried to refute the _first_ sentence.
>[color=green]
> > On a web page for a flower shop in Davenport, Iowa, a
> > phone number should be written in the format commonly used by
> > ordinary people in Davenport, Iowa, not in a manner adopted by
> > international commercial concerns in Europe.[/color]
>
> Really? So you seriously think they will misunderstand, or fail to
> understand, a phone number that uses standard punctuation?[/color]

Quite possibly. But it will *certainly* confuse some, who will say, "What
the heck does +19458293829 mean?" and may not recognize it as a phone
number. Remember, you're talking from the perspective of someone who already
knows the standard format.

Anyway that's not the main point. I believe you're inflating the scope and
role of standards committees. It's not up to an international committee to
dictate local practices or to coerce people into giving up their familiar
conventions in local affairs. I'd think you'd agree, unless you're an
Englishist or an Esperantist who'd like the ISO to compel his compatriots to
switch to English or Esperanto and stop using Finnish altogether. :-)
[color=blue]
>
> The fact is that when nonstandard punctuation is used in phone numbers,
> _different_ systems of punctuation are used, and the numbers become
> understandable only if you look at the digits only and ignore _all_
> punctuation. So you might just as well use standard punctuation,[/color]

It's not a question of "might as well". It's not a question of making a
choice between the traditional convention and the standard, it's a question
of most people not even knowing about the convention.
[color=blue]
>with
> spaces (or no-break spaces when desired), which is the least confusing-
>[color=green]
> > Likewise, dates on a
> > web-based calendar of events for a church in Walla Walla are going to
> > appear as "4/13/04, 4:30 P.M." or "April 13, 2004, at 4:30 pm".
> > "2004-04-13 16:30" would be inappropriate.[/color]
>
> What about all the potential visitorslike tourists and immigrants who get
> very confused with American notations like 03/04/05 and have to guess
> which number means which component of a date? (In the worst case, they
> think they know well what it means.)[/color]

Many of them also get confused because we Americans have the annoying habit
of writing things in English instead of the tourists' language. (Most other
countries are the same way!) That's the way it goes when you travel: you
encounter things that are unfamiliar. If you go to Egypt, you'll usually see
numbers written in Arabic numerals; if you go to China, they'll often be
written in Chinese numerals.

I wouldn't have any argument against a movement at the national level to
introduce and switch to the standard format. After all, I've been wishing
for 30 years that we'd get around to switching to the metric system. But
that's not the same thing as advising someone (and by the way, I may not be
talking about the OP here--I'm talking about a generic situation) to switch
unilaterally to a convention unfamiliar to her and to the rest of her
community. There wouldn't be any more benefit to that than to being the only
butcher in the state to sell meat by the gram instead of by the ounce.
[color=blue]
>
> Date issues are different from phone number notations, since real
> misunderstandin gs are possible with dates.[/color]

Real confusion is possible with phone numbers.
[color=blue]
>The first thing to note is
> that by writing the year in four digits makes virtuallu sure that the
> reader gets at least the year right. :-)[/color]

Since year 2000, I've tended to write four-digit years too: 3/15/2004. But
in daily use I stick to the local convention for the order of the date's
components.

[Jukka K. Korpela]

Re: non-breaking hyphens??

"Harlan Messinger" <h.messinger@co mcast.net> wrote:
[color=blue][color=green]
>> Really? So you seriously think they will misunderstand, or fail to
>> understand, a phone number that uses standard punctuation?[/color]
>
> Quite possibly. But it will *certainly* confuse some, who will say,
> "What the heck does +19458293829 mean?"[/color]

That's not standard punctuation.
[color=blue]
> I believe you're inflating the
> scope and role of standards committees. It's not up to an
> international committee to dictate local practices or to coerce
> people into giving up their familiar conventions in local affairs.[/color]

The Web is not local. We are discussing authoring for the World Wide Web
here. And there are no "familiar conventions" for phone numbers even
locally but a confused mess. Since unification is needed anyway, there's
little reason not to do that by the standard.

ObHTML: There's the minor argument too that in HTML, we can easily and
effectively make a space non-breaking in a cross-browser way. The very
existence of this thread indicates this this is not the case for
hyphens.
[color=blue]
> Many of them also get confused because we Americans have the annoying
> habit of writing things in English instead of the tourists' language.[/color]

Thank _you_ for saying that, even though you don't explicitly mention
that it's the "US English" with its odd notational conventions (like
using a period as a decimal separator!) that confuses us. You have the
liberty of continuing that even in the areas that confuse us most, like
phone numbers that might or might not be local and date notations that
look like fractions. ObHTML: evil browsers may split a line after a
solidus "/" as well, but admittedly they mistreat the hyphen "-" even
more often, and the only effective way (for both characters) is the
abhorred nonstandard <nobr> markup, except in special occasions.

--
Yucca, http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/
Pages about Web authoring: http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/www.html

[Harlan Messinger]

Re: non-breaking hyphens??

"Jukka K. Korpela" <jkorpela@cs.tu t.fi> wrote:
[color=blue]
>"Harlan Messinger" <h.messinger@co mcast.net> wrote:
>[color=green][color=darkred]
>>> Really? So you seriously think they will misunderstand, or fail to
>>> understand, a phone number that uses standard punctuation?[/color]
>>
>> Quite possibly. But it will *certainly* confuse some, who will say,
>> "What the heck does +19458293829 mean?"[/color]
>
>That's not standard punctuation.[/color]

Now that I'm researching the standard Andreas provided, all I'm
finding is examples that *do* use hyphens, in spite of what he said.
In fact, the only thing lacking in the OP's format is the plus sign.
(I think it's coincidence that we have a 1 in front of our area codes.
We had local calls, intra-LATA calls, and inter-LATA calls. For local
calls, we only needed the basic seven digits. For intra-LATA calls, we
needed to tack on the area code. For inter-LATA calls, to signal the
switch that the call was to another LATA, a 1 was inserted in front.
This was unrelated to 1 being the international dialing code for the
US.)[color=blue]
>[color=green]
>> I believe you're inflating the
>> scope and role of standards committees. It's not up to an
>> international committee to dictate local practices or to coerce
>> people into giving up their familiar conventions in local affairs.[/color]
>
>The Web is not local.[/color]

You're mixing up the medium with the communication. Communications via
international media are often local. I'm not making a specious
distinction. E-mail and SMTP are international. Does that mean an
Uzbek ought to me sure he follows international standards when he
sends e-mail in Uzbek to a family member? The New York Times is read
internationally . Advertisements are placed in it by local businesses
targeting local customers, and there's no reason why they need to
internationaliz e their ad copy.
[color=blue]
>We are discussing authoring for the World Wide Web
>here. And there are no "familiar conventions" for phone numbers even
>locally but a confused mess.[/color]

We've been recognizing phone numbers here without difficulty for the
past century or more, without kibbitzing by international standards
organizations, so in what sense are there no "familiar conventions"?

I have a confession: I think that uniformity has fallen by the wayside
here. I have a recollection that phone numbers always appeared as
(xxxx) xxx-xxxx, but nowadays I see xxx-xxx-xxxx a lot too.
[color=blue]
>Since unification is needed anyway, there's
>little reason not to do that by the standard.
>
>ObHTML: There's the minor argument too that in HTML, we can easily and
>effectively make a space non-breaking in a cross-browser way. The very
>existence of this thread indicates this this is not the case for
>hyphens.
>[color=green]
>> Many of them also get confused because we Americans have the annoying
>> habit of writing things in English instead of the tourists' language.[/color]
>
>Thank _you_ for saying that, even though you don't explicitly mention
>that it's the "US English" with its odd notational conventions (like
>using a period as a decimal separator!) that confuses us.[/color]

At least we've gotten rid of the use of letters in place of the first
two digits of the number! When we moved to the town in which I mostly
grew up, our prefix (the three digits after the area code) was 531.
Everyone who lived there before us had JE1 (Jefferson-1).

Anyway, German, Danish, and so on have their own peculiar conventions
for dates and/or times. Have all Germans and Danes stopped using those
formats in their newspapers, magazines, and Web pages?
[color=blue]
>You have the
>liberty of continuing that even in the areas that confuse us most, like
>phone numbers that might or might not be local and date notations that
>look like fractions. ObHTML: evil browsers may split a line after a
>solidus "/" as well, but admittedly they mistreat the hyphen "-" even
>more often, and the only effective way (for both characters) is the
>abhorred nonstandard <nobr> markup, except in special occasions.[/color]


--
Harlan Messinger
Remove the first dot from my e-mail address.
Veuillez ôter le premier point de mon adresse de courriel.

[Jukka K. Korpela]

Re: non-breaking hyphens??

Harlan Messinger <hmessinger.rem ovethis@comcast .net> wrote:
[color=blue]
> "Jukka K. Korpela" <jkorpela@cs.tu t.fi> wrote:
>[color=green]
>>"Harlan Messinger" <h.messinger@co mcast.net> wrote:
>>[color=darkred]
>>>> Really? So you seriously think they will misunderstand, or fail to
>>>> understand, a phone number that uses standard punctuation?
>>>
>>> Quite possibly. But it will *certainly* confuse some, who will say,
>>> "What the heck does +19458293829 mean?"[/color]
>>
>>That's not standard punctuation.[/color]
>
> Now that I'm researching the standard Andreas provided, all I'm
> finding is examples that *do* use hyphens, in spite of what he said.[/color]

I'm afraid Andreas gave the wrong number. E.164 is the ITU telephone
numbering plan. It describes how and by whom telephone numbers are
assigned. The ITU recommendation that specifies how telephone numbers
(and some other contact information) are to be written as text is
ITU E.123.

There's a short overview of E.123 at

http://www.geocities.com/dtmcbride/reference/tel-fmt.html

[color=blue]
> We've been recognizing phone numbers here without difficulty for the
> past century or more, without kibbitzing by international standards
> organizations, so in what sense are there no "familiar conventions"?[/color]

Which village are you referring to? I was discussing the World Wide Web,
and worldwide communication channels in general, something that has
existed (as something used by the masses) for a decade or so.
And there the confusion is very real.
[color=blue]
> I have a confession: I think that uniformity has fallen by the
> wayside here. I have a recollection that phone numbers always
> appeared as (xxxx) xxx-xxxx, but nowadays I see xxx-xxx-xxxx a lot
> too.[/color]

And those are not the only variants. Besides, phone numbers _should_ be
in somewhat different notation, depending on whether they are in local
format or global format (with country code). But any notational
differences beyond that, differences resulting merely from varying
conventions or lack thereof, create confusions.

ObHTML: it would be nice if HTML had a <phone> element, partly because it
would let speech browsers read a phone number as a sequence of digits,
not as an integer (555 123 as five five five one two three, not as five
hundred fifty five thousand one hundred and twenty three). The usefulness
might not be obvious if you don't know the fairly common (outside the
Anglo-Saxon world, that is) convention of using a space as a thousands
separator in numbers.
[color=blue]
> Anyway, German, Danish, and so on have their own peculiar conventions
> for dates and/or times. Have all Germans and Danes stopped using
> those formats in their newspapers, magazines, and Web pages?[/color]

No, they have mainly just created some added confusion by using mixed
notations. Even the official statistics bureau of Finland uses American
date notation like 10/09/2004 in some of their material _in Finnish_
(with no mention of the notation).

The existence of all kinds of mixed notations, even notations that didn't
exist until recently, implies a simple rule: any date notation that uses
only numbers and punctuation is inherently unsafe, unless it is in the
ISO 8601 notation with a four-digit year, such as 2004-10-09. In
monolingual documents, where the dates need not be comprehensible at all
to people who don't know the language, it is quite OK to use traditional
notations _with the month expressed with a word_ or alphabetic
abbreviation, such as "9. lokakuuta 2004".

ObHTML: In running text, "9.&nbsp;lokaku uta 2004" might be a good idea,
since a line break after "9." is undesirable - a full stop at the end of
line may look like an end of sentence.

--
Yucca, http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/
Pages about Web authoring: http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/www.html

[Toby Inkster]

Re: non-breaking hyphens??

Harlan Messinger wrote:
[color=blue]
> When we moved to the town in which I mostly grew up, our prefix (the
> three digits after the area code) was 531. Everyone who lived there
> before us had JE1 (Jefferson-1).[/color]

Your prefix was the same as theirs. Notice on phone keypads J=5, E=3.

(Aside: "Klondike 5" is 555 and is usually used for fake numbers in
American films.)

--
Toby A Inkster BSc (Hons) ARCS
Contact Me ~ http://tobyinkster.co.uk/contact

[Harlan Messinger]

Re: non-breaking hyphens??

Toby Inkster <usenet200410@t obyinkster.co.u k> wrote:
[color=blue]
>Harlan Messinger wrote:
>[color=green]
>> When we moved to the town in which I mostly grew up, our prefix (the
>> three digits after the area code) was 531. Everyone who lived there
>> before us had JE1 (Jefferson-1).[/color]
>
>Your prefix was the same as theirs. Notice on phone keypads J=5, E=3.[/color]

I know, though I might have spelled that out in my previous posting
for those who weren't aware of it. I'm curious whether other countries
ever substituted letters for numbers. Now that I think about it,
people elsewhere probably have learned about that *now*, even if they
weren't aware of it before, because the overlay of the alphabet over
the telephone keypad is used in modern text messaging.
[color=blue]
>
>(Aside: "Klondike 5" is 555 and is usually used for fake numbers in
>American films.)[/color]


--
Harlan Messinger
Remove the first dot from my e-mail address.
Veuillez ôter le premier point de mon adresse de courriel.

[Dr John Stockton]

Re: non-breaking hyphens??

JRS: In article <Pine.GSO.4.44. 0410081807210.3 256-100000@s5b004>, dated
Fri, 8 Oct 2004 18:13:12, seen in news:comp.infos ystems.www.authoring.ht
ml, Andreas Prilop <nhtcapri@rrz n-user.uni-hannover.de> posted :[color=blue]
>
>Write your telephone numbers in standard format (ITU E.164).
>Then there should be no hyphens in your numbers.[/color]

Have you a Web reference, preferably HTML not PDF, for that standard or
for a useful subset of it?

--
© John Stockton, Surrey, UK. ?@merlyn.demon. co.uk DOS 3.3, 6.20; Win98. ©
Web <URL:http://www.merlyn.demo n.co.uk/> - FAQqish topics, acronyms & links.
PAS EXE TXT ZIP via <URL:http://www.merlyn.demo n.co.uk/programs/00index.htm>
My DOS <URL:http://www.merlyn.demo n.co.uk/batfiles.htm> - also batprogs.htm.

[Dr John Stockton]

Re: non-breaking hyphens??

JRS: In article <Xns957CCF0F77F EBjkorpelacstut fi@193.229.0.31 >, dated
Fri, 8 Oct 2004 17:22:28, seen in news:comp.infos ystems.www.authoring.ht
ml, Jukka K. Korpela <jkorpela@cs.tu t.fi> posted :[color=blue]
>[color=green]
>> Likewise, dates on a
>> web-based calendar of events for a church in Walla Walla are going to
>> appear as "4/13/04, 4:30 P.M." or "April 13, 2004, at 4:30 pm".
>> "2004-04-13 16:30" would be inappropriate.[/color]
>
>What about all the potential visitorslike tourists and immigrants who get
>very confused with American notations like 03/04/05 and have to guess
>which number means which component of a date? (In the worst case, they
>think they know well what it means.)[/color]

And, perhaps of more consequence to the Church authorities in Walla
Walla, the customary US attitude means that typical Americans never
learn what things are like in the great world outside (parts of Canada
excepted) and so cannot cope when they do find themselves outside North
America - or when they meet a date written according to FIPS.

--
© John Stockton, Surrey, UK. ?@merlyn.demon. co.uk Turnpike v4.00 MIME. ©
Web <URL:http://www.merlyn.demo n.co.uk/> - w. FAQish topics, links, acronyms
PAS EXE etc : <URL:http://www.merlyn.demo n.co.uk/programs/> - see 00index.htm
Dates - miscdate.htm moredate.htm js-dates.htm pas-time.htm critdate.htm etc.