NAME¶

patgen - generate patterns for TeX hyphenation

SYNOPSIS¶

patgen dictionary_file pattern_file patout_file translate_file

DESCRIPTION¶

The patgen program reads a dictionary_file containing a list of hyphenated words and a pattern_file containing previously-generated patterns (if any) for a particular language (not a complete TeX source file; see below), and produces the patout_file with (previously- plus newly-generated) hyphenation patterns for that language. The translate_file defines language specific values for the parameters left_hyphen_min and right_hyphen_min used by TeX's hyphenation algorithm and the external representation of the lower and upper case version(s) of all `letters' of that language. Further details of the pattern generation process such as hyphenation levels and pattern lengths are requested interactively from the user's terminal. Optionally, patgen creates a new dictionary file pattmp.n showing the good and bad hyphens found by the generated patterns, where n is the highest hyphenation level.

The patterns generated by patgen can be read by initex(1) for use in hyphenating words. For the original example of patgen's output, see (in TeX Live) $TEXMFMAIN/tex/generic/hyphen/hyphen.tex, which contains the patterns TeX uses for English by default. In TeX Live, patterns for (many) other languages are available (unless chosen not to be installed).

All filenames must be complete; no adding of default extensions or path searching is done.

FILE FORMATS¶

Letters

When initex digests hyphenation patterns, TeX first expands macros and the result must entirely consist of digits (hyphenation levels), dots (`.', meaning the edge of a word), and letters. In pattern files for non-English languages letters are often represented by macros or other expandable constructs. For the purpose of patgen these are just character sequences, subject to the condition that no such sequence is a prefix of another one.

Dictionary file

A dictionary file contains a weighted list of hyphenated words, one word per line, each starting in column 1. A digit in column 1 indicates a global word weight (initially =1) applicable to all following words up to the next global word weight. A digit at some intercharacter position indicates a weight for that position only.

The hyphens in a word are indicated by `-', `*', or `.' (or their replacements as defined in the translate file) for hyphens yet to be found, `good' hyphens (correctly found by the patterns), and `bad' hyphens (erroneously found by the patterns) respectively; when reading a dictionary file `*' is treated like `-' and `.' is ignored.

Pattern file

A pattern file contains only patterns in the format above, e.g., from a previous run of patgen. It may not contain any TeX comments or control sequences. For instance, this is not a valid pattern file:

% this is an invalid pattern file for TeX.
\patterns{%


 ...
}

Pattern files can only contain the actual patterns, i.e., the `...'.

Translate file

A translate file starts with a line containing the values of left_hyphen_min in columns 1-2, right_hyphen_min in columns 3-4, and either a blank or the replacement for one of the ``hyphen'' characters `-', `*', and `.' in columns 5, 6, and 7. Input lines are extended with blanks as for many TeX related programs.

Each following line defines one `letter': an arbitrary delimiter character in column 1, followed by one or more external representations of that character (first the `lower' case one used for output), each one terminated by the delimiter and the whole sequence terminated by another delimiter.

If the translate file is empty, the default values are left_hyphen_min=2, right_hyphen_min=3, and the 26 lower case letters a...z with their upper case representations A...Z.

Terminal input

After reading the translate_file and any previously-generated patterns from pattern_file, patgen requests input from the user's terminal.

First the integer values of hyph_start and hyph_finish, the lowest and highest hyphenation level for which patterns are to be generated. The value of hyph_start should be larger than any hyphenation level already present in pattern_file.

Then, for each hyphenation level, the integer values of pat_start and pat_finish, the smallest and largest pattern length to be analyzed, as well as good weight, bad weight, and threshold, the weights for good and bad hyphens and a weight threshold for useful patterns.

Finally the decision (`y' or `Y' vs. anything else) whether or not to produce a hyphenated word list.

FILES¶

$TEXMFMAIN/tex/generic/hyphen/hyphen.tex

The original hyphenation patterns for English, by Donald Knuth and Frank Liang.

$TEXMFMAIN/tex/generic/hyphen/zerohyph.tex

A pattern file with no patterns, for languages that don't use hyphenation.

SEE ALSO¶

Frank Liang and Peter Breitenlohner, patgen.web.

Frank Liang, Word hy-phen-a-tion by com-puter, STAN-CS-83-977, Stanford University Ph.D. thesis, 1983, http://tug.org/docs/liang.

Donald E. Knuth, The TeXbook, Addison-Wesley, Appendix H.

https://ctan.org/pkg/hyphenex

Hyphenation exceptions for American English, maintained by the TUGboat editors, and used in TUGboat articles by default.

https://ctan.org/pkg/hyph-utf8

Collected hyphenation patterns for many languages in many formats.

https://ctan.org/pkg/ushyph

Large set of additional hyphenation patterns for English, extended by Gerard Kuiken.

https://ctan.org/tex-archive/language/

General CTAN directory for patterns and support for many other languages.

https://tug.org/TUGboat/Contents/listkeyword.html#CatTAGMultilingualDocumentProcessing

TUGboat articles on hyphenation and other aspects of language-specific document processing.

AUTHORS¶

Frank Liang wrote the first version of this program. Peter Breitenlohner made a substantial revision in 1991 for TeX 3. The first version was published as the appendix to the TeXware technical report. Howard Trickey originally ported it to Unix.

Public discussion list and bug reports: https://lists.tug.org/tex-k