[tex-live] patterns generation & editing

[Philip Taylor (Webmaster, Ret'd)]

Manuel Pégourié-Gonnard wrote:

> I'm quite surprised to learn that. I know near to nothing about the process of
> building pattern files, but, being French, I already had a look at hyph-fr.tex,
> and noticed it is full of comments, and moreover the patterns are divided as
> "phonetic" and "etymological".

That file is truly remarkable, and does indeed give every indication
that it has received considerable post-Patgen attention, although it
is by no means clear that the actual /patterns/ therein were
derived empirically rather than through the use of Patgen.

My suspicion is that when a problem was noticed, the word-list was
modified and Patgen re-run, then the two "patterns" file compared
using a "differences" utility and comments added at the point(s) of
difference.  It would certainly be worth contacting those of
the original authors who are still reachable (sadly not Bernard G)
to ask what they know of this process.

% Jacques Desarmenien, Universite de Strasbourg :
%          -  << how to run TeX in a French environment: hyphenation, fonts,
%             typography. >> in Tugboat, 5 (1984) 91-102. and TeX85 conference
%          -  << La division par ordinateur des mots francais :
%             application a TeX >> in TSI vol. 5 No 4, 1986 (C) AFCET-
%                                                             Gauthier-Villars
% Norman Buckle, UQAH (nb; many additions)
% Michael Ferguson, INRS-Telecommunications (mjf) June 1988
% Justin Bur, Universite de Montreal (jbb; checked against original list)
%                    all patterns including apostrophe missing from nb list
% after that, GUTenberg  and specially Daniel Flipo and Bernard Gaulle

** Phil.