[tex-hyphen] Re: hyphenation group

[Hans Hagen]

Per Starback wrote:

>   for patterns for the new German orthography of 1996, and
> 
> 	en-US-AHD

preferably lowercase filenames, so: en-us-ahd

> * Revisions:
> 
>   "% The Plain TeX hyphenation tables [NOT TO BE CHANGED IN ANY WAY!]"
> 
>   I think maybe there has been to much emphasis on keeping
>   old hyphenation rules around so it's possible to recreate old documents
>   in exactly the same way.  Of course that is a valid concern, but it's
>   not something very special for hyphenation patterns, but goes for all
>   files you load.  For almost every package I use in a TeX document it's
>   conceivable that a slight change in it might cause a non-expected
>   change my document. So maybe this problem should be addressed in a
>   more general way than only for hyphenation patterns?

patterns change but the official updates never happen more than one time per 
year, so just appending the year is enough

   en-us-ahd-1968

>   There is at least one difference though. Very cautious users could
>   make time-capsules to go with their documents where they have copies
>   of all packages they use. What's special with hyphenation patterns
>   is that since only INITEX can load them it's not that easy.

Runtime loading of pattern sis one of the things im going to discuss with Taco 
since there is no real need for preloading (maybe a few languages, but not all) 
and we once discussed that option (since it's technically possible).

>   The user gets an informational messages during TeXing that says
>   something like
>   
>     to keep the exact same hyphenation as you get now, please change
>     "de-DE" to "de-DE-1996-20010607" in your file, please!
>   
>   Is this how it's supposed to work? (Or maybe no message, because
>   casual users shouldn't be bothered and advanced users who need this
>   will know it?)

don't bother the user with such details; it's enough to have an archive and ost 
users don't care of their doc flow changes a bit (small chance on that anyway 
after a few pattern changes)


>   But that assumes that the updated TeX installation will have TeX
>   formats built with the old patterns as well as the new.  Will it
>   really be so? Probably not really old versions?

no, but users can generate a special format for this one book that they need to 
retypeset; since pattern files are small, the old ones can be distributed with 
the new ones

>   I have nothing against keeping old versions, I just wonder if it
>   really will help much with the perceived problem. Most times it
>   would probably be easier to change the document as needed than to
>   build one's own TeX format to use an older version of a set of
>   patterns.  I've had hyphenations in a document change because of
>   changes in Babel, but if I had had to change the TeX document to
>   make it come out the same my first thought wouldn't be to change it
>   to load an older version of Babel.

sure, but if you're writing manuals about tex and want your carefully chosen 
examples to come out according to what the text says ...

> * In an ideal world I think the restriction that only INITEX can load
>   hyphenation patterns should be lifted. I don't know, but I guess
>   that restriction is there because of performance problems that
>   probably aren't an issue anymore.
> 
>   Then the cautious users could load their own patterns from their
>   time capsules too.

that's indeed the idea

Hans

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