From alb@riq.qc.ca Fri Mar 10 01:06:24 1995 Received: from socrate.riq.qc.ca by dkuug.dk with SMTP id AA15060 (5.65c8/IDA-1.4.4j for ); Fri, 10 Mar 1995 02:04:15 +0100 Received: from slip70 (slip71.riq.qc.ca) by socrate.riq.qc.ca (5.0/SMI-SVR4) id AA21824; Thu, 9 Mar 1995 20:06:25 +0500 Date: Thu, 9 Mar 1995 20:06:24 +0500 Message-Id: <9503100106.AA21824@socrate.riq.qc.ca> X-Sender: alb@riq.qc.ca X-Mailer: Windows Eudora Version 1.4.4 Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" To: Multi-byte Code Issues , Multiple recipients of list ISO10646 From: alb@riq.qc.ca (Alain LaBont(e')) Subject: Re: How should irregular hyphenation be represented? Cc: i18n@dkuug.dk, cpwg-mail@revcan.ca Content-Length: 1439 X-Charset: ASCII X-Char-Esc: 29 Olle says: >Indications of "recommended hyphenation behavior" in a text is a >very useful thing if the text is to be displayed in a window or >printed in a column with another width than the original (or in >a font with other metrics than the original). These examples >show that in general hyphenation can't be represented in _plain >text_, i.e. only by the possibilities provided by a coded >character set. That hyphenation can be represented in the >English language by means of the ugly hack SOFT HYPHEN is only a >happy coincidence. in my opinion, not all languages are so irregular. An example is French, which is the example that confirms the rule (this language being in general more complex than the average for most things, not on this): only 3 rules are re necessary to do hyphenation correctly in French and it si fully algorithmic. You believ we have no problems: newspapers here (in Quebec and French Canada) have bought in general American packages which look in dictionaries to do hyphenation: they never were able to adapt those pieces of software so that they could hyphenate new words correctly in French: the softwares are so complex and badly written that they can get rid of the dictionary toll booth. Please in internationalization do not imbed hyphenation functions in data nor in generic software. Use standard software hooks or demons... This is my only recommendation on this. Alain LaBont Qubec