Re: [Groff] explicit hyphen and numbers

[Werner LEMBERG]

> I can't think of a context where a true hyphen between numbers could
> be accetably broken.
> 
> I'm excluding cases where a number-range is implied, as in
> 
>   Items 2-7
> 
> since this should properly be represented by an en-dash (with or
> without padding), as in
> 
>   2\(en7   2\^\(en\^7   1\(en\^8

BTW, in German, AFAIK, you should use `-', not \[en].  Note that \[en]
behaves exactly as `-' w.r.t. hyphenation.

>   Items item2-1 item2-2 item2-3 item 3-1 item3-5 ...
> 
> and again I can't imagine that a break at a hyphen would be
> acceptable.  Wouldnt it look just awful:
> 
>   ............. item3-
> -1

No, it would be 

    ............. item3-
  1

> If anyone can think of a context where a hyphen break between two
> numbers is OK, I'd be very interested to hear of it!

For very long numbers it probably gives the only sensible breakpoint;
it is also useful for autogenerated input.


    Werner