[XeTeX] alternate text for line-breaking

[Philip Taylor (Webmaster, Ret'd)]

Have a look at TeX's \discretionary, Bogdan : this
may give you some ideas.

Philip Taylor
--------
Bogdan Butnaru wrote:

> I was wondering if is it possible to do write a LaTeX command that
> provides text alternatives when the line-breaking algorithm can’t find
> good line breaks. For example, a command that for:
>
>      Pretext \alternate{something}{a  thing} post-text.
>
> runs the line-breaking algorithm for “Pretext something post-text.”
> but if gets bad results (i.e., if it would report
> an underful or overful hbox) tries again with “Pretext a thing
> post-text.”