<div dir="ltr"><div>Hi,</div><div><br></div><div>First post to the list, reporting a bug. Please point me to the bug tracker if there is one.</div><div><br></div>Debugging an Android user report, I found that Android was hyphenating the words "democrat" and "democrats" incorrectly, as:<div><span style="font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:13px"><br></span></div><div><span style="font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:13px">de-mo-c-rat</span><br style="font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:13px"><span style="font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:13px">de-moc-rats</span><br><div><br></div><div>While Merriam Webster was recommending:</div><div><span style="font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:13px"><br></span></div><div><span style="font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:13px">dem-o-crat</span><br></div><div><span style="font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:13px"><br></span></div><div><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">And Plain TeX was hyphenating as:</font></div></div><div><span style="font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:13px"><br></span></div><div><span style="font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:13px">demo-crat</span><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><br></font></div><div><span style="font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:13px">democrats</span></div><div><span style="font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:13px"><br></span></div><div><span style="font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:13px">Digging deeper, the source of the problem seems to be the following pattern in </span><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">hyph-en-us.pat.txt:</font></div><div><span style="font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif"><br></span></div><div><span style="font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif">5moc1ra1t</span><br></div><div><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><br></font></div><div><span style="font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif">That pattern seems to not exist in Plain TeX's pattern file for US English. The other patterns applying to those words, all existing in Plain TeX, are:</span><br></div><div><span style="font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif"><br></span></div><div><span style="font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:13px">1mo</span><br style="font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:13px"><span style="font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:13px">4mocr</span><br style="font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:13px"><span style="font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:13px">5crat.</span><span style="font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif"><br></span></div><div><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><br></font></div><div><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">I think the source of the problem is that the authors of the extended pattern file derived the modified patterns based on TUGboat's exception list, they created that "</font><span style="font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif">5moc1ra1t" </span><span style="font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif">pattern based on the word "de-moc-ra-tism" and didn't notice that adding it would cause "democrat" and "democrats" to be hyphenated incorrectly.</span></div><div><span style="font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif"><br></span></div><div><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">I guess these two words would not be the only exceptions, and there should be tens of other words that are affected by a similar problem of over-weighing the exception list.</font></div><div><span style="font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif"><br></span></div><div><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">I believe as a temporary solution, the US English hyphenation patterns should be restored to the Plain TeX version, and the exception list should get extended to include everything in <a href="http://mirror.ctan.org/info/digests/tugboat/hyphenex/ushyphex.tex">http://mirror.ctan.org/info/digests/tugboat/hyphenex/ushyphex.tex</a>.</font></div><div><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><br></font></div><div><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">I can prepare a patch, if that's useful.</font></div><div><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><br></font></div><div><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Best,</font></div><div><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Roozbeh</font></div></div>