Breaking an overlong word

This example sets the same paragraph twice in a column too narrow for one of its words: every layout eventually meets the word that will not fit — a chemical name, a German compound, a web address, an order reference nobody thought about. The word turns up in production, in one record out of a thousand, long after the team signed the layout off, and it comes back with the next reference, whatever width the column is given. The overlong setting decides: overflow leaves the whole word to run past the edge, break cuts it after the last glyph that fits.

Left alone, the word runs past the right edge and out of the column, over the margin and sometimes off the paper — honest, and ugly. Told to break, it is cut after the last letter that fits and the rest goes on the next line, so nothing escapes the column whatever arrives in it. The choice is made block by block, because a narrow table cell and a paragraph of running text do not want the same answer.

What this example shows

• The same paragraph running past the edge of the column, then kept inside it.
• The two settings one above the other on the same page of the PDF.
• The same choice on a block of text, on a table cell and on text that changes style part-way; this example shows only the block of text.

The source code, complete

Nothing is left out and nothing is simplified: this is the program exactly as it runs, for the developer who uses this library. The third is the description itself: a plain list of what the page has to say, which is what the service is sent.

Read the Rust source Read the Python source Read the JSON source

The document itself

Open the document in English Open the document in French

Optimised, this document weighs 13.6 kB — at least 85 % lighter than most PDF generators would write it

The document is lighter than it was, and every page still looks exactly the same. See this document's row in the table of every example.