[net.internat] TeX hyphenation table for French

lamy@utai.UUCP (Jean-Francois Lamy) (02/07/86)

References:

Has anybody ever attempted constructing a french version of the TeX
hyphenation table? 

Or are the rules sufficiently similar that building such a table would be an
overkill? I'm asking for people whose production is about 60% French/ 40%
English.

I've been relying on software for much too long to answer that question
myself... The text processor I used as an undergrad had been hacked to
hyphenate French. Then came the WYSIWIG text processor, where in case of doubt
you move words around to avoid learning the rules... Then came progress(?) and
a need to go back to TeX's wonderful world of batch processing...
-- 

Jean-Francois Lamy              
Department of Computer Science, University of Toronto,         
Departement d'informatique et de recherche operationnelle,  U. de Montreal.

CSNet: lamy@toronto.csnet  UUCP: {utzoo,ihnp4,decwrl,uw-beaver}!utcsri!utai!lamy
EAN: lamy@iro.udem.cdn     ARPA: lamy%toronto.csnet@CSNET-RELAY.arpa

jaap@mcvax.UUCP (Jaap Akkerhuis) (02/15/86)

In article <1265@utai.UUCP> lamy@utai.UUCP (Jean-Francois Lamy) writes:
 > References:
 > 
 > Has anybody ever attempted constructing a french version of the TeX
 > hyphenation table? 
 > 

Yes.

 > Or are the rules sufficiently similar that building such a table would be an
 > overkill? I'm asking for people whose production is about 60% French/ 40%
 > English.

The claim is that it it's "almost perfect" for French. Since it's done in
Quebec, I don't know wether this works for French French.
Also, if the hyphenation rule is context dependent, they don't consider an
error to be a problem.

Of course, using this to hyphenate (Canadian) English might be a problem.
The same is true for the Dutch version of the tables. They will have some
weird effects on non-Dutch languages. Switching hyphenation alogorithms in TeX
is next to impossible (at least in all the versions I've seen)..

In troff, the last is possible. In a good multi-lingual version of
troff it is even environment dependent.

 > I've been relying on software for much too long to answer that question
 > myself... The text processor I used as an undergrad had been hacked to
 > hyphenate French. Then came the WYSIWIG text processor, where in case of doubt
 > you move words around to avoid learning the rules... Then came progress(?) and
 > a need to go back to TeX's wonderful world of batch processing...

If you want to argue about WSIWIG versus batch, you should do it in net.text.

Anyway, the reference to French hyphenation in TeX is:
	Proceedings of PROTEXT I (24-26 October Dublin Ireland)
		Page 108-113
	Word hyphenation in French
	N. Buckle
	D\*'epartment d'informatique
	Universit\*'e di Qu\*'ebec \*`a Hull

Good luck,

	jaap (mcvax!jaap)