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@malthe
Created September 22, 2011 13:11
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Dictionary-based HTML hyphenation using soft hyphen
import os
import re
from htmlentitydefs import name2codepoint
# Must install the `hyphenator` library from PyPi!
from hyphenator import Hyphenator
# Firefox comes with an English hyphenation dictionary
path = os.popen('locate hyph_en_US.dic').readlines()[0].strip()
hyphenator = Hyphenator(path)
spaces = re.compile(r'\s+')
shy = unichr(name2codepoint['shy'])
def hyphenate(string, max_length=20):
return " ".join(
len(word) > max_length and
shy.join(
part.rstrip('-') for part in
(hyphenator.wrap(word, max_length) or (word, ))
) or word for word in spaces.split(string.strip()))
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