[tex-hyphen] tex patterns as lua files

[Karl Berry]

    > Is the change still planned for TL2010? 

I agree with Manuel: it's much more important to get it right than to
try to make a deadline.  

I also agree with Norbert: before we can really make a plan, we
(Norbert/Karl) need to understand what's going on and what your system
means for us :).

I mean, I know the general theory is to load the hyphenation patterns at
runtime on demand, instead of preloading them all in the fmt.  But how,
specifically, will the stuff be written and read?  

Perhaps it will be easiest to explain by way of comparison if I describe
how it works now (if you already know all this very well, sorry).
Which is: language.{dat,def} are constructed using information that
originates in the .tlpsrc files, such as (in hyphen-spanish.tlpsrc):

execute AddHyphen name=spanish synonyms=espanol \
  lefthyphenmin=2 righthyphenmin=2 file=loadhyph-es.tex

It gets copied from the tlpsrc to texlive.tlpdb, and tlmgr reads it from
there to create language.*, and finally language.* are read by the TeX
files that create the .fmt's.

So, here are some example questions ... will additional definitions in
the tlpsrc be necessary for Lua(La)TeX?  Will lua(la)tex still read the
same language.{dat,def} that are read now, or are new files needed? And
if new files are needed, what's in them and where and how will they be
generated?

I realize from your other mail that a new hyphen.cfg and etex.src will
be needed.  Ok, that is good to know, and doesn't present any problems
that I can see.

    Are there some ideas on when the package freeze will occur?

The first round of test builds all went fine.  The source programs are
as updated as they are expected to be (thanks incredibly much to Taco
and Thanh and the others).  So there is nothing technically big holding
us up at this point, just some (hopefully minor) pending infrastructure
questions (Norbert/Manuel: that missing png.dll!).

However, I need to get through a bunch of admin tasks: ask the special
mirror people to get restarted, and do some test builds, and make
announcements, before we can think about freezing.  I'm guessing a
couple more weeks at least.

I am not crazy about the idea of throwing in the whole new luatex
pattern system, but if you are confident that it is stable enough for
release, we can try.