{Hyphenation patterns in \TeX\ Live and beyond}
{Arthur Reutenauer}
{Hyphenation has always been one of the strengths of \TeX, which since
its \TeX82 version has had an efficient algorithm to describe how words
should be divided across linebreaks. This algorithm was successfully
used to produce \emph{hyphenation patterns} for many languages, as
testified to by the many pattern sets present in \TeX\ distributions.

In 2008 Mojca Miklavec and myself overhauled all the pattern sets in the
\TeX\ Live distribution in order to rationalise them and prepare them
for Lua\TeX, which expects Unicode input, while keeping them usable by
earlier \TeX\ engines. The result of this effort was the somewhat
misleadingly named package \code{hyph-utf8}, and was soon adopted by
the MiK\TeX\ distribution also.

We have since then been maintaining the package, which now supports
about 80 languages and language variants. We also initiated many
collaborations with other actors in the free software world, as \TeX's
hyphenation algorithm is used in some form by OpenOffice, LibreOffice,
and Firefox, as well as lesser-known programs such as Apache \acro{FOP}.

I will discuss some of the challenges we encounterered, and our future plans.}