[tlug] line-breaking in Japanese with '(' and ')'?

["Stephen J. Turnbull" <stephen@example.com>]

Gernot Hassenpflug writes:

 > On the dev-l10n list there is a discussion about how to do
 > line-breaking in Japanese with '(' and ')' characters. I haven't seen
 > any rules for those characters particularly, does anyone know if they
 > count as punctuation in the same way as the Japanese full-stop and
 > comma?

No.  "Parentheses" (ie,including quotation marks) bind to the enclosed
text the same as in English.  Closing parentheses thus behave
identically to the full stop and reading point.

 > Or alternatively, any documentation on this, I am at a loss as what
 > exactly to search for in Japanese here.

Kinsoku or 禁則.  In other words, "regulations about forbidden
breaks."

See also Unicode TR#14 <http://www.unicode.org/reports/tr14/> and the
appropriate tables.  That's current (version 19); the draft process is
up to version 21, but none of the changes affect Japanese.