As you suggest, some stuff one cannot handle this way. I was testing out
columns in FOP some time back, and ran an example that contained URLs, just
as you cite as an example above. No way would this be readable when
compressed.

At some point, obviously, the formatter has to refuse to handle the problem,
though, and leave it up to the user to correct the situation and rerun.

What do programs such as Framemaker, Pagemaker, Quark, etc do in
these situations?

1. Ends of words.
2. Specified hyphens or other breakable characters.
3. Implied hyphenation points (as looked up in the dictionary)
4. Wherever it is required, if the "word" is simply longer
   than the space it has to fit in.

I haven't seen a program "compress" text to make it fit
(this sounds pretty scary).

-------------------------
James Robertson
Step Two Designs Pty Ltd
SGML, XML & HTML Consultancy
Illumination: an out-of-the-box Intranet solution

http://www.steptwo.com.au/
jamesr@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx