Apache OpenOffice (AOO) Bugzilla – Issue 24885
Do not sub-hyphenate hyphenated compounds
Last modified: 2013-02-07 22:35:45 UTC
It is not correct in standard English typography to sub-hyphenate compound words containing hyphens. In other words, "de-escalate" may be hyphenated at the one fixed hyphen or nowhere. But OOo 1.1.0 happily hyphenates it "de-es-calate", and another issue (24883) is currently making it impossible to override this without serious side effects. OOo hyphenation should recognize such compound words, and handle them correctly. (Users who insist on doing it wrong can insert soft hyphens themselves.)
Reassigned to BH
Now hyphenation of words with hyphens and n-dashes is not a hyphenator problem. The hyphenator gets only (sub)words without hyphens and n-dashes. Hence your option would be better in Writing Aids->Options, as "Restricted hyphenation of words with hyphens and n-dashes". Until then, don't hyphenate the word (Select it, and set the language of the word to [None] in Format->Character->Font->Language) or use custom hyphenation (put "escalate=" into your custom dictionary, see Tools->Options->Writing Aids->User defined dictionaries page, if you don't want to break escalate in "de-escalate"). For Polish, maybe it would be better to forbid base hyphenation at hyphens and n-dashes, and leave OOo hyphenator to hyphenate them with non-standard hypőhenation patterns. So, we need a new option and a new suboption: * base hyphenation of words with hyphens and n-dashes * hyphenate only at hyphens and n-dashes or we need new options in the language resource files.
To grep the issues easier via "requirements" I put the issues currently lying on my owner to the owner "requirements".