Looking for a special printhyphens macro

Question

In May 2012 user9588 answered:

\documentclass[12pt,a4paper]{article}
\def\rehbox{{\unskip\unpenalty\setbox0\lastbox\ifhbox0 \rehbox
    \hbox{\unhbox0} \else \leavevmode \fi}}
\newcommand\printhyphens[1]{%
  \setbox0\vbox{{%
      \pretolerance-1\hsize=0pt\hfuzz=\maxdimen
      \noindent\hspace*{0pt}#1\par\rehbox}\par}%
  \unvbox 0
}

\begin{document}
\printhyphens{If you cannot reconsider this proposal, you are
  incompatible, my dearest friend.}
\end{document}

Is it possible to construct a macro \printhyphs which does following:

\documentclass[12pt,a4paper]{article}

<hyphenfile = my-path/sillyhyphens.txt>

\begin{document}
\printhyphs{If you cannot}
\printhyphs{reconsider this proposal, you are}
\printhyphs{incompatible, my dearest friend.}
\end{document}

Running (pdf|xe)latex will create a file: my-path/sillyhyphens.txt, containing:

If you can- not
re- con- sid- er this pro- pos- al, you are
in- com- pat- i- ble, my dear- est friend.

Whether or not the -signs are followed by a space is irrelevant.

I don't think this is possible; hyphenation happens at a very late stage of processing, when TeX is preparing boxes for typesetting. If you use \showhyphens{<text>} the hyphens are shown in the .log file and you can filter it. — egreg, Jul 07 '13 at 16:05
I need this for the syllables in a (large) text and I use showhyphens at the moment. But it does not work (properly) with xelatex and filtering them is problematic. When they can appear in the .log file, so why not in another? — Jack, Jul 07 '13 at 16:18
@Jack The package xltxtra redefines \showhyphens so that it works also with XeTeX. — egreg, Jul 07 '13 at 21:29
@egreg Yes, I know. But one has to feed the words separated by commas rather than spaces and, worse: the hypenated words do not appear together on one line but as separate (hyphenated) words, spread all over the .log file. This makes processing a bit cumbersome. — Jack, Jul 07 '13 at 22:18
@Jack We don't add "Solved" to the title; rather, if an answer is helpful and solves (totally or mostly) the problem, the better way is to accept it, by clicking the check mark near the start of the answer's text. — egreg, Jul 08 '13 at 23:17

Heiko Oberdiek · Accepted Answer · 2013-07-07T22:34:40.733

A solution based on package soul. \printhyphs is implemented as soul driver that collects the syllables and hyphenation points in macro \printhyphs@line, which written into the output file at the end of \printhyphs in \SOUL@postamble:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{soul}

\makeatletter
\newwrite\printhyphs@out
\immediate\openout\printhyphs@out=sillyhyphens.txt\relax

\DeclareRobustCommand*{\printhyphs}{%
  \SOUL@setup
  \def\SOUL@preamble{%
    \global\let\printhyphs@line\@empty
  }%
  \def\SOUL@everyspace##1{%
    \g@addto@macro\printhyphs@line{ }%
  }%
  \def\SOUL@everysyllable{%
    \expandafter\g@addto@macro\expandafter\printhyphs@line
    \expandafter{\the\SOUL@syllable}%
  }%
  \def\SOUL@everyhyphen{%
    \g@addto@macro\printhyphs@line{- }%
  }%
  \def\SOUL@everyexhyphen##1{%
    \g@addto@macro\printhyphs@line{##1}%
  }%
  \def\SOUL@postamble{%
    \immediate\write\printhyphs@out{\printhyphs@line}%
  }%
  \SOUL@
}

\begin{document}
\printhyphs{If you cannot}%
\printhyphs{reconsider this proposal, you are}%
\printhyphs{incompatible, my dearest friend.}%
\end{document}

File sillyhyphens.txt is written with the following lines:

If you can- not
re- con- sider this pro- posal, you are
in- com- pat- i- ble, my dear- est friend.

Heiko, this is terrific and what I hoped for. Is the "y- ou" the only anomaly? Do you have a sugestion on how to get rid of the "y- ou" other than with sed or awk? — Jack, Jul 07 '13 at 22:23
@Jack: Answer fixed and the settings for \lefthyphenmin and \righthyphenmin removed. — Heiko Oberdiek, Jul 07 '13 at 22:35
I just found out that I had to fiddle a bit with \lefthyphenmin and \righthyphenmin. Thanks again! — Jack, Jul 07 '13 at 22:49
@Jack: Just remove them, then the values of the current language are used. They were a left over from the example driver in the documentation of soul. — Heiko Oberdiek, Jul 07 '13 at 22:50

score 4 · Answer 2 · answered Jul 07 '13 at 19:13

4

from time to time, a "hyphenation exception log" (update) is published in tugboat. the most recent was in vol.33, no.1. the full list, in the form of a tugboat article file, tb0hyf.tex, is posted to ctan along with its .pdf output as part of the hyphenex package.

a "showhyphens" routine is used to produce this list; the code is in the article .tex file, and should be able to be adapted to the purpose you have in mind.

answered Jul 07 '13 at 19:13

barbara beeton

88,848

Thanks Barbara, for you confirmation that it IS possible. The point is that I tried to adapt the \printhyphens in my org post, but my knowledge of TeX is far to limited. I could not even understand all the error messages that were thrown on my screen. I'll go after Heiko's hint. – Jack Jul 07 '13 at 22:30

Looking for a special printhyphens macro

2 Answers2