How to allow line break in a long hyperlink in a PDF compiled by latex-dvips-ps2pdf?

Question

I am using latex-dvips-ps2pdf steps with -Ppdf option passed to dvips. The following code snippet

documentclass{article}

usepackage[colorlinks]{hyperref}
usepackage{breakurl}
hypersetup{pdfborder={0 0 100}}

defemailA{url{abcdefghi.jklmn.opqrs.tuvwxyz@tuvwxyz.com} }
defemailB{url{jklmn.opqrs.tuvwxyz.abcdefghi@tuvwxyz.com} }
begin{document}
emailA or emailB or emailB or emailA or 
emailA or emailB or emailB or emailA or 
emailA or emailB or emailB or emailA or 
emailA or emailB or emailB or emailA or 
emailA or emailB or emailB or emailA or 
emailA or emailB or emailB or emailA or 
emailA or emailB or emailB or emailA or 
end{document}

produces the output as follows.

Is there any trick to fix it?

Gonzalo Medina · Accepted Answer

Even with the help of the breakurl package, your example will produce overfull boxes. This is because breakurl will only break urls after one of the following symbols :/.?#&_,;! and before any ocurrence of the symbol %.

To overcome this you have two possibilities: to use sloppy (which will make the spacing look really awful) or to manually insert some spaces in the appropriate places to help the package find a proper break-point for the urls.

In the following example I show a reduced version of your example with three variants: the first one shows the default output obtained with breakurl; in the second one, I manually inserted some hspaces, and in the third one I used sloppy. It's up to you to decide which of the two last approaches looks less ugly and is more practical.

I used draft to see the overfull boxes more clearly. The code must be compiled through latex.

documentclass[draft,10pt]{article}

usepackage[colorlinks]{hyperref}
usepackage{breakurl}
hypersetup{pdfborder={0 0 100}}

defemailA{url{abcdefghi.jklmn.opqrs.tuvwxyz@tuvwxyz.com} }
defemailB{url{jklmn.opqrs.tuvwxyz.abcdefghi@tuvwxyz.com} }
begin{document}

The example:

emailA or emailB or emailB or emailA or
emailA or emailB or emailB or emailA or 
emailA or emailB or emailB

vspace{1cm}

The example with verb+hspace+s manually inserted:

hspace*{-4pt}emailA or emailB or emailB or emailAhspace{3pt} orhspace{4pt} 
emailA or emailB or emailB or emailA or 
emailA or emailBhspace{3pt} orhspace{3pt} emailB

vspace{1cm}

The example with verb+sloppy+:

begingroup
sloppy
emailA or emailB or emailB or emailA or
emailA or emailB or emailB or emailA or 
emailA or emailB or emailBpar
endgroup

end{document}

Ian Thompson · Answer

Try this.

documentclass{article}
usepackage[breaklinks=true]{hyperref}
begin{document}
If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to contact me
at url{mailto:xport@tex.stackexchange.com}.
end{document}

With href, you need to use nolinkurl in the second argument.

href{mailto:xport@tex.stackexchange.com}{nolinkurl{xport@tex.stackexchange.com}}

lockstep · Answer

Have a look at the breakurl package -- page 1 of the documentation includes the answer to your question.

MrD · Answer

I finally found a solution, that might be of interest to all the ones having problems with displaying long URLs in LaTeX:
I had a little chat with Vilar (the maintainer of the breakurl-package) and he was able to extend the breaking possibilities of his package they way I suggested.

Therefore the new option anythingbreaks in the newest version does the links look good as they keep in range of the textborder.

See for yourself:

Completely without:

Standard behavior:

Anythingbreaks:

Look also at my question here: Biblatex: URL-breaking not working in DVI-mode

Sergio · Answer

Add

Lazy answer, but it's working for me, and I'm new in latex:

BEFORE:

url{http://www.mma.gov.br/port/conama/processos/C1CB3034/DECRETO_SAO_PAULO_59113_2013.pdf}

AFTER:

url{http://www.mma.gov.br/port/conama/processos/C1CB3034/DECRETO_SAO_PAULO_59113_2013.pdf}

queuverflow · Answer

I found 2 solutions for breaking long URLs.

The first one unfortunately doesn't work with hyperref.

usepackage[hyphens]{url}

This will break long URLs after hyphens, which is mostly ok. But since hyperrefuses urlsomehow, there's a conflict activating the hyphens-option

! LaTeX Error: Option clash for package url.

If somebody has an explanation (or solution) for me, I'd be glad.

The second solution works fine. I haven't researched it intensely, yet. But it should be a clean solution as only the characterlist for linebreaking is manipulated an neither measures nor mechanisms are influenced. (I'd appreciate it, if someone could verify this.)

usepackage{hyperref}
%or usepackage{url}
usepackage{etoolbox}
apptoUrlBreaks{do-}

The last line adds the hyphen to the list of characters after which an URL is allowed to break. You can expand the list by adding "dos" like {doadobdoc} (This would allow URLs to break after a, b, and c, too.)

There's also a list UrlBigBreaks. But I haven't checked it out, yet.

Alison · Answer

You can use the href function twice (or as many times as you link), both linking to the same URL, but the first with the text you want to appear on the first line, and the second with the text you want to appear on the second line. In other words, you decide where the line break occurs. A bit of a bodge but works well for me:
(href{Full URL}{underline{Text up to the end of line 1}} href{Full URL}{underline{Text for the start of line 2}})

Miladiouss · Answer

Package Setup:
RequirePackage[bookmarks, bookmarksopen=true, plainpages=false, pdfpagelabels, pdfpagelayout=SinglePage, breaklinks = true]{hyperref}

Sample Hyperlink:
href{https://tex.stackexchange.com/a/576098/147162}{Link to this answer!}}

How to allow line break in a long hyperlink in a PDF compiled by latex-dvips-ps2pdf?

8 Answers

Package Setup:

Sample Hyperlink:

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