Soft hyphen as hyphenation hint

Do you actually use it?

[andreasfriedrich]

Do you use the soft hyphen as a hyphenation hint [cs.tut.fi]?

Please describe why or why not.

pro
- makes for much nicer right margins
- makes for easier reading
- ...

cons
- works only in certain browsers
- needs browser sniffing
- ...

Andreas

[tedster]

con
Extra development time with little ROI

[andreasfriedrich]

Now thatīs the real business man speaking: ROI is everything. :)

Donald E. Knuth wrote TeX just so his articles looked nicer. Donīt you think that asthetics is a value in its own right?

Andreas

[digitalghost]

>>Thus, ­ could be used at most as an occasional hyphenation hint in special cases, with the risk that it may not have such an effect and it may even be displayed as a normal hyphen in any context by some browsers.

Pretty much summed it up for me.

[tedster]

Donīt you think that asthetics is a value in its own right?

Definitely. But there is always a point of diminishing returns, and for me the ­ is well over that line.

For me, it's similar to cognac. A $100 bottle is wonderful. A $1000 bottle has a better flavor, but it just ain't 10X better.

[andreasfriedrich]

So you are just cheap ;).

Donīt worry, I do get and appreciate your point.

Andreas

[digitalghost]

The more I read on this, the more reasons I find for not using it.

>>Use of the non-breaking space and soft hyphen indicator characters is discouraged because support for them is not widely deployed.

Am I wrong in assuming that the most logical reason for ­ would be justification?

[andreasfriedrich]

is not widely deployed

IE supports it. IE is widely deployed.

Am I wrong in assuming that the most logical reason for ­ would be justification?

Thatīs the whole point of it. If your copy fills a line almost up to the end this makes reading much nicer. I do admit it is a soft factor, but if you want people to read longer texts on screen then I do believe that everything you can do to make it easier for them should be done. Hyphenating is one such thing. Users may not know why some layout is easier to read than another but they do realize it.

Andreas

[digitalghost]

The most effective example they used on the site was the separation of syllables though.

I can see the benefit, but I'm not sure I'll use the technique in the near future. I'd have to see more support for it and many more rendering examples before I used it to start justifying text. I prefer newspaper column style text layouts now and it would come in handy although I see the potential for mangling copy with it as well. ;)

[andreasfriedrich]

I see the potential for mangling copy with it as well

I did, when I first used it and served pages containing ­ to GoogleBot. I was never listed in the SERPs for keywords with multiple syllables since users just refused to search for pen­sion schafs­pelz.

Andreas