[tex-live] suggested changes to file locations on CTAN

[Vladimir Volovich]

Greetings Johannes and CTAN Team,

i noticed that babel distribution includes some of hyphenation
patterns. As a result, these files are located in
CTAN:macros/latex/required/babel/
instead of
CTAN:language/hyphenation/

The latter is the long-established location for all hyphenation
patterns. And the situation when patterns are located in babel's
directory makes it harder for distributions to correctly install all
hyphenation patterns. This can be seen e.g. by the fact that TeX Live
2004's distribution has all these patterns installed in a place where
TeX cannot find them (namely, in texmf-dist/doc/generic/babel/).

Therefore, i suggest to REMOVE any hyphenation patterns from babel
distribution, and install them in the proper location on CTAN.
(after all, patterns can be used by themselves, without more advanced
babel support)

To further demonstrate the need for that, it can be noted that some of
the patterns in babel's distribution are already present in other
locations on CTAN, and sometimes files in babel are outdated.

Here are details:

1) Bulgarian patterns in macros/latex/required/babel/:

  bghyphen.tex bghyphsi.tex catmik.tex mik2t2.tex

Please (remove these files from babel and) install them in

CTAN:language/hyphenation/bghyphen/

(it makes sense to use separate dir since there are several files
(similar to ruhyphen and to ukrhyph) which reside in separate
directories)

2) Interlingua patterns:

CTAN:macros/latex/required/babel/iahyphen.tex
CTAN:language/hyphenation/iahyphen.tex

Both files are the same, and the file in babel's distribution may be
safely removed.

3) Icelandic patterns:

CTAN:macros/latex/required/babel/icehyph.tex
CTAN:language/multilingual/eurotex/inputs/icehyph.tex

files differ (though probably by the way of treating 8-bit chars:
^^-notation versus 8-bit chars), therefore i suggest to move the file
from CTAN:macros/latex/required/babel/icehyph.tex
to   CTAN:language/hyphenation/icehyph.tex

4) Latin patterns:

CTAN:language/hyphenation/lahyph.tex
CTAN:macros/latex/required/babel/lahyph.tex

The file distributed in babel is an older version compared to the file
in language/hyphenation, and therefore the file lahyph.tex can be
removed from babel.

Thank you very much for considering this proposal.

Best,
v.