Re: texinfo.tex: how to tell TeX to consider a line break like @* ?

[Bruno Haible]

Hello Karl,

> For TeX, only:
> 
>   Markus Kuhn's UTF-8 and Unicode FAQ: @address@hidden@hfilneg
>   @url{http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/unicode.html}

Perfect!! Many thanks. I've put this into a macro, like this:

@iftex
@macro texnl
@address@hidden@hfilneg
@end macro
@end iftex
@ifnottex
@macro texnl
@end macro
@end ifnottex

That would be a good addition to the documented set of texinfo commands,
IMO. Probably under the name @/ or similar.

> (The 9000 is more or less random; I get the same results with any
> positive number <10000.

Same for me. Whether I put in 9000 or 100, it leaves an "underfull
hbox" warning of badness 2680.

> Here is the explanation (taken from Knuth):
> 
> If a break is taken at the \penalty, the preceding \hfil will fill the
> line with blank space, and the \hfilneg will be discarded after the
> break; but if no break is taken at the penalty, the \hfil| and
> \hfilneg will cancel each other and have no effect.

Knuth is a genius in assembling complex functionality from trivial looking
building blocks.

> Alternatives:

Thanks for proposing them. Your solution is the best for me.

> 1) use @* after all and deal with rewriting when and if needed.

Drawback: Need to review the uses of @* when something in the paragraph
changes, or when the document's page width, margin, or font size changes.

> 2) use @/ within the @url to allow line breaks.

Drawback: URLs that are otherwise presented as single-line entities to
the user are broken into pieces.

> 3) use the @raggedright environment (in the next release), since any
>    such brief paragraph with long url's is unlikely to be justifiable.

Drawback: Will not work when a 5-line paragraph contains 1 long URL.

Thanks again!

Bruno