Package soul Error: Reconstruction failed

Question

I already read the discussions about this error, but nothing helpfull. My MWE

\documentclass{minimal}
\usepackage{xcolor}
\usepackage{soul}
%\soulregister{\cl}{7} irrelevant
%\soulregister{\sethlcolor}{7}
\definecolor{inlineBG}{HTML}{F1F1F1}
\newcommand{\cl}[2]{\textcolor[HTML]{#1}{#2}}

\newcommand{\codeinline}[1]{%
  \sethlcolor{inlineBG}{%
  \texttt{\hl{#1}}}%
}

\begin{document}

% ok :
\codeinline{ {\cl{FF0000}{Hello}} }

% Package soul Error: Reconstruction failed.
\codeinline{ {\cl{FF0000}{Hellooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo}} }

\codeinline{ {\cl{FF0000}{Hello World}} }

\end{document}

the first \codeinline works fine, not the others. How can i fix it ?

Answer 1

In a similar situation, I found the help text provided by the soul package quite useful. It suggests to wrap the text inside an mbox. Indeed, if you change your definition to

\newcommand{\codelinline}[1]{%
  \sethlcolor{inlineBG}{%
  \texttt{\hl{\mbox{#1}}}}%
}

your MWE works for me. There might be issues with hyphenation if the text inside \codeline is long. (Seems to be a limitation of soul generally.)

Answer 2

It won't work. The word-/syllable analyzer of soul is rather fragile and a complicated command like \textcolor throws it out of the track. If you want to color the text, you should call the color before the \hl. Small bit of colors can be hidden in a \mbox:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{xcolor}
\usepackage{soul}

\definecolor{inlineBG}{HTML}{F1F1F1}
\definecolor{inlineFG}   {HTML}{FF0000}
\newcommand{\codeinline}[1]{{%
  \sethlcolor{inlineBG}%
  \color{inlineFG}%
  \ttfamily
  \hl{#1}%
}}

\begin{document}

% ok :
\codeinline{Hello}

\codeinline{Hellooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo}

\codeinline{Helloooooooooo\mbox{\textcolor{green}{oooo}}ooooooooooooooooooooooooooo}
\end{document}