Re: the dash from "||"

[Tobias Burnus <burnus@gmx.de>]

Hi Ed, 

> I sometimes wonder why the dash produced by "||" is so big:
>       la-la la--la la$-$la la||la
> 
> The last one is pretty dark and long.  I like the ability to have
> optional breaks, but I'd expect the last one ("la||la") to look like
> the first ("la-la").  Sometimes the darker dash looks out of place in
> documents.
> 
> Is there a grammatical reason for the darker dash, or some other
> reason perhaps?

It think Hans wanted to have a alternative to the hyphen which appears on the
end of the line.
(How to type ``Haber-Bosch process´´ here some prefer `--' because Fritz Haber
and Carl Bosch are two persons, a || might look nicer since a  `-' is usually
bigger than a `--' and || is longer than `-'. In my opinion || is not the best
for words like `so-called' etc.)

It is defined in supp-lan.tex
%D The sequence \type{||} simply leads to two words connected by
%D a hyphen. Because we want to distinguish such a hyphen from
%D the one inserted when \TEX\ hyphenates a word, we use a bit
%D longer one.
\def\compoundhyphen     {{-}\kern-.25ex{-}}

I'm sure you can setup the behaviour (maybe it is in the big manual), but I
cannot find it yet.
(It may work if you use \def\compoundhyphen{{-}}, but I'm to tied and have to
few time to think and test it.)

Tobias