Adding "soft-hyphen"

[Mark]

My PHP script builds a table that is too wide to fit on the paper. Two
of the columns contain strings that are more lengthy than data in the
other columns.

I can get the table to fit by letting the browser break the lengthy
strings across two or more lines, thus allowing the column to get
skinnier. I do this by inserting spaces in various places in the
string. But this is not a desirable solution as it would mislead the
user into thinking the string contains spaces when it doesn't.

Is there an invisible character code I can insert into the string that
tells the browser that it is allowed to line-wrap the string at this
place, if needed? Popular word processors have a feature like this
called "soft hyphens" or "soft breaks", etc.

Mark

[Terry]

Re: Adding "soft-hyphen"

Mark wrote:[color=blue]
> My PHP script builds a table that is too wide to fit on the paper. Two
> of the columns contain strings that are more lengthy than data in the
> other columns.
>
> I can get the table to fit by letting the browser break the lengthy
> strings across two or more lines, thus allowing the column to get
> skinnier. I do this by inserting spaces in various places in the
> string. But this is not a desirable solution as it would mislead the
> user into thinking the string contains spaces when it doesn't.
>
> Is there an invisible character code I can insert into the string that
> tells the browser that it is allowed to line-wrap the string at this
> place, if needed? Popular word processors have a feature like this
> called "soft hyphens" or "soft breaks", etc.[/color]

You must have something in your html/css that is preventing line wrap.
Default is for table text to wrap. Also check the way you have defined
table width - 90% will force the table to fit in the view size.

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[Mark]

Re: Adding "soft-hyphen"

Terry wrote:[color=blue]
>
> You must have something in your html/css that is preventing line wrap.
> Default is for table text to wrap. Also check the way you have defined
> table width - 90% will force the table to fit in the view size.
>[/color]
In Firefox, at least, text in cells will not be wrapped unless there is
a break point, such as whitespace. If a have long text without
whitespace in a column, such as a URL, Firefox will stretch the width of
the column to the minimum necessary to show the full string without a
line-wrap. I don't know if this is the case with IE, yet, as I am not
in a location that I have access to the password-protected page in question.

Mark

[Sandman]

Re: Adding "soft-hyphen"

In article <dg3rlb$qfn$1@n ews.nems.noaa.g ov>, Mark <Mark.Fenbers@n oaa.gov>
wrote:
[color=blue]
> My PHP script builds a table that is too wide to fit on the paper. Two
> of the columns contain strings that are more lengthy than data in the
> other columns.
>
> I can get the table to fit by letting the browser break the lengthy
> strings across two or more lines, thus allowing the column to get
> skinnier. I do this by inserting spaces in various places in the
> string. But this is not a desirable solution as it would mislead the
> user into thinking the string contains spaces when it doesn't.
>
> Is there an invisible character code I can insert into the string that
> tells the browser that it is allowed to line-wrap the string at this
> place, if needed? Popular word processors have a feature like this
> called "soft hyphens" or "soft breaks", etc.[/color]

Well, as far as I know, there is no way to tell the browser to linewrap a long
string to a certain width, only when the string is divided into words, but not
a consecutive string of characters.

A solution could be to put the long field on a row of its own, spanning the
width of the other values.

If the field values are:

1. Foo
2. Bar
3. Donkey
4. Monkey
5. VeryLongStringT hatMessesUpWidt h

And the table looks like this in crappy ASCII art:

+------+------+---------+---------+---------------------------------+
| Foo | Bar | Monkey | Donkey | VeryLongStringT hatMessesUpWidt h |
+------+------+---------+---------+---------------------------------+

And field 5 is the same for all lines in the report, you could divide it like
this:

<tr>
<td>Foo</td>
<td>Bar</td>
<td>Donkey</td>
<td>Monkey</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td colspan='4'>Ver yLongStringThat MessesUpWidth</td>
</tr>

Which, in crappy ASCII art would look like this:

+------+------+---------+---------+
| Foo | Bar | Monkey | Donkey |
+------+------+---------+---------+
| VeryLongStringT hatMessesUpWidt h |
+---------------------------------+

Set style="backgrou nd-color: #CCC" on the first <tr> to make them be dividers
for each long value.

Hope this helped.





--
Sandman[.net]

[Andy Hassall]

Re: Adding &quot;soft-hyphen&quot;

On Mon, 12 Sep 2005 08:03:21 -0400, Mark <Mark.Fenbers@n oaa.gov> wrote:
[color=blue]
>My PHP script builds a table that is too wide to fit on the paper. Two
>of the columns contain strings that are more lengthy than data in the
>other columns.
>
>I can get the table to fit by letting the browser break the lengthy
>strings across two or more lines, thus allowing the column to get
>skinnier. I do this by inserting spaces in various places in the
>string. But this is not a desirable solution as it would mislead the
>user into thinking the string contains spaces when it doesn't.
>
>Is there an invisible character code I can insert into the string that
>tells the browser that it is allowed to line-wrap the string at this
>place, if needed? Popular word processors have a feature like this
>called "soft hyphens" or "soft breaks", etc.[/color]

Have a look at http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/shy.html for a fairly involved
discussion of the HTML equivalent.

--
Andy Hassall :: andy@andyh.co.u k :: http://www.andyh.co.uk
http://www.andyhsoftware.co.uk/space :: disk and FTP usage analysis tool

[Mark]

Re: Adding &quot;soft-hyphen&quot;

Andy Hassall wrote:[color=blue]
>
> Have a look at http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/shy.html for a fairly involved
> discussion of the HTML equivalent.[/color]

Actually, It was Jukka Korpela who pointed out in another post that I
could use the <wbr> tag to indicate a permissible place for a line
break. This is used inside <nobr> tags, which seems counter-intuitive
at first, but it gives you control as to exactly where you will permit a
line break and nowhere else...

I've already tried it, and <wbr> works well for IE, but Firefox just
ignores it.

Mark

[Andy Hassall]

Re: Adding &quot;soft-hyphen&quot;

On Mon, 12 Sep 2005 13:31:59 -0400, Mark <Mark.Fenbers@n oaa.gov> wrote:
[color=blue]
>Andy Hassall wrote:[color=green]
>>
>> Have a look at http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/shy.html for a fairly involved
>> discussion of the HTML equivalent.[/color]
>
>Actually, It was Jukka Korpela who pointed out in another post that I
>could use the <wbr> tag to indicate a permissible place for a line
>break. This is used inside <nobr> tags, which seems counter-intuitive
>at first, but it gives you control as to exactly where you will permit a
>line break and nowhere else...
>
>I've already tried it, and <wbr> works well for IE, but Firefox just
>ignores it.[/color]

Neither <nobr> nor <wbr> exist in HTML 4.01, so Firefox is correct in ignoring
them.

http://www.w3.org/TR/html401/index/elements.html

--
Andy Hassall :: andy@andyh.co.u k :: http://www.andyh.co.uk
http://www.andyhsoftware.co.uk/space :: disk and FTP usage analysis tool

[Mark]

Re: Adding &quot;soft-hyphen&quot;

>>[color=blue][color=green]
>>I've already tried it, and <wbr> works well for IE, but Firefox just
>>ignores it.[/color]
>
>
> Neither <nobr> nor <wbr> exist in HTML 4.01, so Firefox is correct in ignoring
> them.
>
> http://www.w3.org/TR/html401/index/elements.html
>[/color]

It's _very_ unfortunate that neither Firefox or HTML 4.01 embrace this
useful tag. Furthermore, Firefox also ignores the or &#173; code
which _IS_ part of the HTML 4 standard
(http://www.w3.org/TR/html401/sgml/entities.html). Now I'm relegated to
having to post a message that says something to the effect of... "For
best results with a printed copy of this table, use Internet Explorer." :(

Mark

[Andy Hassall]

Re: Adding &quot;soft-hyphen&quot;

On Mon, 12 Sep 2005 14:35:37 -0400, Mark <Mark.Fenbers@n oaa.gov> wrote:
[color=blue][color=green][color=darkred]
>>>I've already tried it, and <wbr> works well for IE, but Firefox just
>>>ignores it.[/color]
>>
>> Neither <nobr> nor <wbr> exist in HTML 4.01, so Firefox is correct in ignoring
>> them.
>>
>> http://www.w3.org/TR/html401/index/elements.html[/color]
>
>It's _very_ unfortunate that neither Firefox or HTML 4.01 embrace this
>useful tag.[/color]

I think Firefox is correct in not supporting non-existent tags; nobody wants
the bad old days of <marquee><blink >made-up tags</blink></marquee> to be
encouraged.
[color=blue]
>Furthermore, Firefox also ignores the or &#173; code
>which _IS_ part of the HTML 4 standard
>(http://www.w3.org/TR/html401/sgml/entities.html).[/color]

But here I strongly agree with you; Firefox's lack of support for the proper
way of doing discretionary hyphens is unfortunate.

There is a change request for this, though, which you may want to add your
vote to:

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=9101

--
Andy Hassall :: andy@andyh.co.u k :: http://www.andyh.co.uk
http://www.andyhsoftware.co.uk/space :: disk and FTP usage analysis tool