[vox-tech] breakinguplongwordsinlatex

[Peter Jay Salzman]

begin Shawn P. Neugebauer <spn@ucdavis.edu> 
> On Tuesday 23 April 2002 05:28 pm, you wrote:
> > begin nbs <nbs@sonic.net>
> > > On Tue, Apr 23, 2002 at 05:10:13PM -0700, Peter Jay Salzman wrote:
> > > <snip>
> > > > \linebreak[0]: if it's convenient, please consider line breaking here.
> > > > \linebreak[1]: please line break here.
> > > > \linebreak[2]: line break here.
> > > > \linebreak[3]: you better line break here or there's hell to pay
> > > > \linebreak[4]: hello latex, this is god speaking. thou shalt line
> > > > break.
> > >
> > > Hmm.. this doesn't do much for me.  I'm not in control of the data
> > > being sent.  (In this case, if the people making the data would need
> > > to go through the trouble of inserting a "\linebreak" command, they
> > > may as well just stick a space in there instead, since it will Do The
> > > Right Thing, anyway.  -  I'm thinking this is what I'm going to have to
> > > have them do.)
> >
> > ok, i think i understand a bit more.   can you make a parbox of a
> > certain width?   i think sticking everything in the parbox should give
> > you the desired result.
> 
> (fyi--would have been helpful to know up front that you didn't want
> to modify the data).
> 
> the parbox trick, which is usually so useful in controlling tables, does
> not work here.  it does not force a word to break, rather, it causes
> an overfull \hbox situation.  try it out.
 
wow -- cool, another latex user.  you must be a grad student or postdoc
in one of the sciences.  what department are you in?

you're absolutely right.  my bad!

i'd have to agree -- it can be done.  but it's way beyond the abilities
of any latex user i know.

suggestion:
1. use shawn's suggestion.  preprocess the data.
2. post to comp.text.tex.  the people there will know the answer.

pete