[XeTeX] Hyphenation for Kannada

[Mojca Miklavec]

On Fri, Mar 9, 2012 at 10:44, Shiva Shankar wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I have a doubt regarding usage of hyphenation rules in LaTeX. Based on
> generic rules or patterns written
> in XeLaTeX for Kannada language I want to write them for Kanlel package.
> Kanlel package is
> not for UTF8 data. It is like Velthuis devanagari package for typesetting
> Sanskrit.

Just to understand your needs better:
1.) Why do you want to use a non-UTF8 packages?
2.) Do you want to use XeLaTeX or pdfLaTeX?
3.) Does Kanlel work only in LaTeX or also in plain TeX?
4.) Is there some simple one-to-one correspondence between one UTF-8
character and one non-UTF-8 character from that Kanlel package?

If there is no such one-to-one mapping, you have to write the patterns
"from scratch" or adapt the UTF-8 patterns completely to take the
weird encoding into account.

> My question is after writing patterns for
> Kannada language how can I test them? and where should I need to specify
> lefthyphenminchar and
> righthyphenminchar? Should I need to follow the route of babel or I is there
> anyway that we can test them directly?

lefthyphenmin/righthyphenmin has to be specified in support package
(that is: in ldf file), but you can also set it manually in your
document.

The easiest way to test UTF-8 patterns is to use
    \uselanguage{langname}
in plain format, together with appropriate fonts of course. If you
have some weird patterns, you need to load package in plain, or, if
you are in LaTeX, you need to write your own ldf file to load
patterns.

Mojca