phppdf/tex-hyphenation

Knuth-Liang TeX hyphenation algorithm for phppdf

dev-master 2026-06-17 21:29 UTC

Requires

• php: >=8.4
• phppdf/phppdf: @dev

Requires (Dev)

• phpbench/phpbench: ^1.6
• phppdf/coding-standard: dev-master
• phpstan/phpstan: ^2.1
• phpstan/phpstan-deprecation-rules: ^2.0
• phpstan/phpstan-phpunit: ^2.0
• phpstan/phpstan-strict-rules: ^2.0
• phpunit/phpunit: ^13.1

MIT

• Walter Tamboer

• pdf
• typography
• hyphenation
• tex

README

A pure PHP implementation of the Knuth-Liang TeX hyphenation algorithm. It splits a word into the fragments allowed at valid hyphenation points, using the same pattern format as TeX (e.g. hy3ph, .ach4).

This package implements the PhpPdf\Text\Hyphenator interface from phppdf/phppdf, so it plugs directly into TextBox and other phppdf text-layout components.

Requirements

• PHP 8.4+
• ext-mbstring

Installation

composer require phppdf/tex-hyphenation

Usage

TeXHyphenator is constructed with an array of raw TeX pattern strings. Bundled pattern files for several locales are included under resources/hyphenation/:

use PhpPdf\Text\TeXHyphenator;

$patterns = file(
    __DIR__ . '/vendor/phppdf/tex-hyphenation/resources/hyphenation/en-US.tex',
    FILE_IGNORE_NEW_LINES | FILE_SKIP_EMPTY_LINES,
) ?: [];

$hyphenator = new TeXHyphenator($patterns);

$hyphenator->breakWord('hyphenation'); // ['hy', 'phen', 'a', 'tion']

The result is a list of fragments; join consecutive fragments with a hyphen wherever a line break is needed.

Minimum margins

leftMin and rightMin control how many characters must remain before the first break and after the last break, respectively (TeX defaults: 2 and 3):

$hyphenator = new TeXHyphenator($patterns, leftMin: 3, rightMin: 3);

Bundled locales

Locale	File
af-ZA	resources/hyphenation/af-ZA.tex
en-GB	resources/hyphenation/en-GB.tex
en-US	resources/hyphenation/en-US.tex
en-ZA	resources/hyphenation/en-ZA.tex
es-ES	resources/hyphenation/es-ES.tex
fr-FR	resources/hyphenation/fr-FR.tex
nl-NL	resources/hyphenation/nl-NL.tex

Use with phppdf

use PhpPdf\Builder\TextBox;
use PhpPdf\Text\TeXHyphenator;

$box = TextBox::create($text, $metrics, 12, 200.0, hyphenator: new TeXHyphenator($patterns));

License

MIT