The thread
Problems reading epub on prs-505 indicates that soft hyphens are a problem in ePub ebooks. From
Robin’s HTML 4.0 Conformance Test:
Quote:
A soft hyphen indicates where an optional word break may occur. When a soft hyphen breaks a word between one line and the next, a hyphen character is displayed at the end of the first line. When a soft hyphen does not break a word between lines, the hyphen must not be displayed.
Soft hyphens are vital for text that must be displayed on a tiny screen or in a narrow frame. Web browsers have no excuse for rendering them incorrectly, when they can be minimally compliant by ignoring them completely.
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However, the ebook readers I tested don't handle soft hyphens well.
The attached ebooks are based on
http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/shytest.html, which is from
Soft hyphen (SHY) – a hard problem?. I enclose a single-file HTML (ZIP), MOBI (via MobiPocket Creator) and ePub (via
BookGlutton) versions. The screenshots are from a Windows PC using Adobe Digital Editions, Sony Ebook Library (PRS-505 like), MobiPocket Reader, FBReader and uBook.
The uBook version (last screenshot) appears to do the best job, but it does not display the "-" when a soft hypen is positioned at the end of a line in the actual document and it might in fact be ignoring all the soft hyphens and using its own hyphenation (it can give discre-tionary, which isn't from the soft hyphens). Adobe Digital Editions (ePub) breaks on a soft hyphen, but does not add a "-" when it does so. Sony is based on ADE, it breaks on a soft hyphen but it also shows "?" at every soft hyphen. MobiPocket shows all soft hyphens as "-" and does not break words. FBReader does break words, but shows all soft hyphens as "-".
Soft hyphens could provide a viable alternative (or augmenation) to on the fly hyphenation, but only if ebook readers either use them for hyphenation or ignore them completely.