[tex-live] Re: Norwegian hyphenation patterns status

[Dag Langmyhr]

> Hi folks,
>
> The situation with Norwegian hyphenation patterns appears to be fairly
> confused (not unusual :().

It is, and I hope things can now be settled. I am very glad you brought 
this up.

> On CTAN there are three files matching "nohyph", all in language/hyphenation:
>
> 1) CTAN:nohyph.tex -- by Preben Randhol (hi Preben), Frank Jensen, Ivar
>   Aavatsmark (hi Ivar), and others. changed by te to use characters
>   instead of macros.  This file reports itself as nohyphen.tex, circa 1994.

These are the first Norwegian patterns. They were manually created (i.e., 
not using `patgen´) by Ivar so they are difficult to maintain. Also, they 
hyphenate according to the pre-1973 rules. My opinion is that this set of 
patterns should be omitted from future TeX distributions.

> 2) CTAN:nohyph2.tex -- by L. Thoresen and D.F. Langmyhr (hi Dag), uses
>   real 8-bit characters and has catcode statements.

These were made by a student and me.

> 3) CTAN:nohyphbx.tex -- by Rune Kleveland and Ole Michael Selberg (hi hi),
>   circa 2005, a much much larger set of patterns.

An improvement, but I had the impression that list of hyphenated words was 
not public. Also, I did not know that Ole was involved.

> 4) TL:nohyph.tex -- appears to be an updating of #1.  Same patterns, but
>    has a different misspelling of "substituted", a different address for
>    te, and a \begingroup ... \endgroup around the definitions.
> 5) TL:nohyph1.tex -- appears to be Ivar's original file, from 1992.
>    Uses cathyph.tex.  I expect it should just be deleted.
> 6) TL:nohyph2.tex -- almost the same as #4, the only difference is in
>    te's email address.  I expect it should be deleted too.
> 
> I did not see a copyright/license statement of any kind in any of the
> files :(.

My files (nohyph2.tex) were created before the concept of a licence was 
common. I have no problems with a GPL licence.

> So perhaps what we should do is something like this:
>
> 1) fix the spelling of "substituted" in #4, include a license statement
>   if we can, and update nohyph.tex on CTAN.  Preben, Ivar?
>
> 2) Include a license statement in nohyphbx (#3) if we can, and put that
>   in TL with a language.nobx.dat (I guess) file so it can actually be
>   used as an alternative.  Rune, Ole?
>
> 3) Don't know if nohyph2.tex should be included as an alternative set of
>   patterns or not.  Dag?
>
> 4) delete #5 and #6.
>
> Any information or instructions would be welcome ...
>
> Thanks,
> karl

I think that Rune's nohyphbx effort is the best so far, particularly if 
Ole can improve it. If Ole can deliver a set of patterns he is satisfied 
with, I suggest that these patterns should be declared "official" in some 
sense and included as the only Norwegian patterns (provided they can be 
given a suitable licence).

I am very happy that Ole has joined the project -- it needs someone with a 
linguistic background. (There exists no official hyphenation dictionary in 
Norway, only a set of vague and sometimes contradictory rules.)

If I can help Ole in this effort, please tell me. I can also offer disk 
space in connection with the NTUG web site.

 						Dag