Re: not all doc "clean-ups" are good

[Werner LEMBERG]

>> Well, it helps in situations like this
>>     This is a  paragraph with  some text to
>>     demonstrate  that  a  path  name   like
>>     /usr/local/share/lilypond/foo.bar
>>     should be split after backslashes.
>> which looks better with a break after the backslash:
> 
> This is sensible, and I agree replacing / with /@/ here is good.
> But changing "and/or" to "and/@/or" is bad (one you changed
> recently.)  Splitting such short strings will make little difference
> to the layout, and I would argue that placing the "/or" at the start
> of a new line renders the text less readable, not more.

You mean `or' at the start of a new line.  The previous line ends with
`and/'

> So a / in any string less than, say, 12 characters should be left
> alone.

Hmm.  From a lot of experience with German documents typeset with
LaTeX I can only say that the more possible breakpoints you have, the
better it is.  We have incredibly long words like
`Donaudampfschifffahrtsgesellschaft', and you get ugly holes in the
text lines if such words aren't properly hyphenated.  Similarly, we
have long Scheme and LilyPond identifiers combined with long file
names in our documentation.  The numbers of such holes can also be
reduced if the number of possible breakpoints in the long word's
vicinity are high, giving TeX a chance to stretch or squeeze lines
before or after the problematic spot.

Due to that, I disagree with your suggestion.  There is absolutely no
reason to not have a breakpoint there, given that it is *always* a
good one.  If you want better readability, you have to suppress
hyphenation altogether.  Remember that even short English words are
hyphenated:

  al-ibi
  al-ley
  su-ing


    Werner