From: Douglas McIlroy <douglas.mcilroy@dartmouth.edu>
Date: Tue, 2 Apr 2024 17:12:18 -0400
To: TUHS main list <tuhs@tuhs.org>
Message-ID-Hash: XD6VX6JU56MZN24OUWGRMJBP3NPUDBW2
Subject: [TUHS] Re: *roff hyphenation trivia challenge
Archived-At: <https://www.tuhs.org/mailman3/hyperkitty/list/tuhs@tuhs.org/message/XD6VX6JU56MZN24OUWGRMJBP3NPUDBW2/>

> [Tex's] oversetting of lines caused by the periodic failure of the
> paragraph-justification algorithms drove me nuts.

Amen. If Tex can't do what it thinks is a good job, it throws a fit
and violates the margin, hoping to force a rewrite. Fortunately,
one can shut off the line-break algorithm and simply fill greedily.
The command to do so is \sloppy--an ironic descriptor of text
that looks better, albeit not up to Tex's discriminating standard.
Further irony: when obliged to write in Tex, I have resorted to
turning \sloppy mode on globally.

Apologies for airing an off-topic pet peeve,
Doug