On the line breaking problem in text formatting

Abstract

A basic problem in text formatting is that of determining the break points for separating a string of words into lines to obtain a formatted paragraph. When formatted text is required to be aligned with both the left and right margins, the choice of break points greatly affects the quality of the formatted document. This paper presents and discusses solutions to the line breaking problem. These include the usual line-by-line method, a dynamic programming approach, and a new algorithm which is optimal and runs almost as fast as the line-by-line method.