[XeTeX] \hyphenation

[Jonathan Kew]

On 5 Aug 2006, at 2:51 pm, Yves Codet wrote:

> Hello.
>
> I'm trying to use the \hyphenation command to tell XeTeX how to  
> hyphenate some Sanskrit words in transliteration, but it has no  
> effect, as the attached file should show. I can't figure why, so I  
> would be thankful if somebody could help. If it's relevant, the  
> text is written with decomposed characters.

Interesting. Looks like a xetex bug.

You'll find that what is really happening is that hyphenation is  
suppressed for the first word within \emph{}; if you alter your text  
to read:

    ....supreme Lord (\emph{a parameśvara})....

then hyphenation does occur.

To work around the problem without introducing an extra word (which  
of course is no solution!), you could use a trick like this:

    ....supreme Lord (\emph{\allowhyph parameśvara})....

with \allowhyph defined in the preamble using:

    \newcommand\allowhyph{\nobreak\hskip0pt\relax}

Clearly there's a glitch in xetex that I need to fix, but this should  
let your hyphenations be used for now. I'll try to look into the  
underlying bug soon. Sorry for the inconvenience!

JK