PATGEN(1)						      General Commands Manual							 PATGEN(1)

NAME

       patgen - generate patterns for TeX hyphenation

SYNOPSIS

       patgen dictionary_file pattern_file patout_file translate_file

DESCRIPTION

       This manual page is not meant to be exhaustive.	See also the Info file or manual Web2C: A TeX implementation.

       The  patgen  program  reads  the dictionary_file containing a list of hyphenated words and the pattern_file containing previously-generated
       patterns (if any) for a particular language (not a complete TeX source file; see below), and produces  the  patout_file	with  (previously-
       plus  newly-generated)  hyphenation  patterns  for  that  language.  The translate_file defines language specific values for the parameters
       left_hyphen_min and right_hyphen_min used by TeX's hyphenation algorithm and the external representation of the lower and upper	case  ver-
       sion(s) of all `letters' of that language. Further details of the pattern generation process such as hyphenation levels and pattern lengths
       are requested interactively from the user's terminal. Optionally patgen creates a new dictionary file pattmp.n showing  the  good  and  bad
       hyphens found by the generated patterns, where n is the highest hyphenation level.

       The  patterns  generated  by  patgen  can  be  read by initex for use in hyphenating words. For a real-life example of patgen's output, see
       $TEXMFMAIN/tex/generic/hyphen/hyphen.tex, which contains the patterns TeX uses for English by default.  At some sites, patterns for  (many)
       other languages may be available, and the local tex programs may have them preloaded.

       All filenames must be complete; no adding of default extensions or path searching is done.

FILE FORMATS

       Letters
	   When initex digests hyphenation patterns, TeX first expands macros and the result must entirely consist of digits (hyphenation levels),
	   dots (`.', edge of a word), and letters. In pattern files for non-English languages letters are often represented by  macros  or  other
	   expandable constructs.  For the purpose of patgen these are just character sequences, subject to the condition that no such sequence is
	   a prefix of another one.

       Dictionary file
	   A dictionary file contains a weighted list of hyphenated words, one word per line starting in column 1. A digit in column 1 indicates a
	   global  word  weight (initially =1) applicable to all following words up to the next global word weight. A digit at some intercharacter
	   position indicates a weight for that position only.

	   The hyphens in a word are indicated by `-', `*', or `.' (or their replacements as defined in the translate file) for hyphens yet to	be
	   found, `good' hyphens (correctly found by the patterns), and `bad' hyphens (erroneously found by the patterns) respectively; when read-
	   ing a dictionary file `*' is treated like `-' and `.' is ignored.

       Pattern file
	   A pattern file contains only patterns in the format above, e.g., from a previous run of patgen.  It may not contain any TeX comments or
	   control sequences.  For instance, this is not a valid pattern file:

	   % this is a pattern file read by TeX.
	   patterns{%
	    ...
	   }
	   It can only contain the actual patterns, i.e., the `...'.

       Translate file
	   A  translate  file  starts  with  a	line containing the values of left_hyphen_min in columns 1-2, right_hyphen_min in columns 3-4, and
	   either a blank or the replacement for one of the "hyphen" characters `-', `*', and `.' in columns 5, 6, and 7. (Input lines are  padded
	   with blanks as for many TeX related programs.)

	   Each  following  line  defines one `letter': an arbitrary delimiter character in column 1, followed by one or more external representa-
	   tions of that character (first the `lower' case one used for output), each one terminated by the delimiter and the whole sequence  ter-
	   minated by another delimiter.

	   If  the translate file is empty, the values left_hyphen_min=2, right_hyphen_min=3, and the 26 lower case letters a...z with their upper
	   case representations A...Z are assumed.

       Terminal input
	   After reading the translate_file and any previously-generated patterns from pattern_file, patgen requests input from the user's  termi-
	   nal.

	   First  the  integer	values of hyph_start and hyph_finish, the lowest and highest hyphenation level for which patterns are to be gener-
	   ated. The value of hyph_start should be larger than any hyphenation level already present in pattern_file.

	   Then, for each hyphenation level, the integer values of pat_start and pat_finish, the smallest and largest pattern length  to  be  ana-
	   lyzed,  as  well as good weight, bad weight, and threshold, the weights for good and bad hyphens and a weight threshold for useful pat-
	   terns.

	   Finally the decision (`y' or `Y' vs. anything else) whether or not to produce a hyphenated word list.

FILES

       $TEXMFMAIN/tex/generic/hyphen/hyphen.tex
	   The original hyphenation patterns for English, by Donald Knuth and Frank Liang.

       $TEXMFMAIN/tex/generic/hyphen/ushyphmax.tex
	   Maximal hyphenation patterns for English, extended by Gerard Kuiken.

       http://www.ctan.org/tex-archive/language/
	   Patterns and support for many other languages

SEE ALSO

       Frank Liang and Peter Breitenlohner, patgen.web.

       Frank Liang, Word hy-phen-a-tion by com-puter, STAN-CS-83-977, Stanford University Ph.D. thesis, 1983, http://tug.org/docs/liang.

       Donald E. Knuth, The TeXbook, Addison-Wesley, 1986, ISBN 0-201-13447-0, Appendix H.

AUTHORS

       Frank Liang wrote the first version of this program.  Peter Breitenlohner made a substantial revision in 1991 for TeX 3.  The first version
       was published as the appendix to the TeXware technical report. Howard Trickey originally ported it to Unix.

Web2C 2012							   7 April 2010 							 PATGEN(1)