Message-ID:  <199604030745.JAA04157@murnau.idris.fr>
Reply-To: Mailing list for the LaTeX3 project
              <LATEX-L@relay.urz.uni-heidelberg.de>
Date:         Wed, 3 Apr 1996 09:45:16 +0200
From: Bernard GAULLE <gaulle@IDRIS.FR>
Sender: Mailing list for the LaTeX3 project
              <LATEX-L@relay.urz.uni-heidelberg.de>
To: Multiple recipients of list LATEX-L
              <LATEX-L@relay.urz.uni-heidelberg.de>
Subject:      Re: Changing \hyphenchar
Status: R

>>>>> On Tue, 2 Apr 1996 15:50:38 BST,
>>>>>    David Carlisle <carlisle@CS.MAN.AC.UK> write about "Re: Changing \hyphenchar":

DC> The fd files generated by `olddc.ins' use the dc 1.1 release font
DC> names and the ones generated by `newdc.ins' generate the new release
DC> 1.2 names, but in both cases the hyphenchar of the fonts are not set
DC> (except for tt fonts which set it to -1)
DC> (The fd files distributed with the dc fonts do set it, but that is
DC> another issue)

hum... this is the root of our discussion.

DC> [...]  So probably all the `OT1' fd files
DC> should be modified to explicitly set \hyphenchar for each OT1 font to
DC> be 45.
DC> As the hyphenchar of T1 fonts is not set in the fd files, that
DC> leaves it free for a user to set \defaulthyphenchar to customise
DC> whether 45 or 127 is used.

it seems we are going towards something like \<fontencoding>defaulthyphenchar

DC> Unfortunately this needs to be switched before any fonts are loaded
DC> into the format, but a suitable cfg file declaration could be
DC> constructed...

again, as long as fd files distributed with the DC force \hyphenchar to `177
        [\DeclareFontFamily{T1}{cmr}{\hyphenchar\font='177 }]
there is no issue to \defaulthyphenchar.

DC> The first solution doen't work as  If you type
DC> \documentclass{article}
DC> \usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
DC> \catcode`\^^7f=12
DC> \begin{document}
DC> aaa-bbb
DC> aaa^^7fbbb
DC> \end{document}}
DC> Then you see that ^^7F is totally unsuitable for use as a compound
DC> word character, [...]

obviously ^^7f needs to have catcode of 11, otherwise it will not do
its job. Why not? but we can't imagine the user typing ^^7f each time
it needs a compound word mark.

  --bg