[texhax] TeX hyphenation -- why do so many words get no hyphens

[C.A.Rowley at open.ac.uk]

Karl wrote --

> 
> For other formats (LaTeX, ConTeXt), I don't see much harm in
> changing/increasing the default English patterns.

That maybe depends on what you mean by `default English'.

> Archival stability is
> pretty much a myth, anyway -- the problems with external files (fonts,
> graphics, packages, ...) changing dwarfs any hyphenation
> incompatibilities.
> 

I agree with all that but it may be that, even for LaTeX+Babel, there are
sound technical reasons for keeping TeX's language 0 tied to the file
hyphen.tex.

That would not prevent better hyphenation being provided by some other
`TeX-level language' which could, when it exists, become the default
for LaTeX (unless it takes so long to produce that the hegemony of
standard US English for the world's literature is a distant memory by
then ...:-).

> "tex" is not actually "TeX" any more anyway (This is TeXk, ...), since
> Don's criteria forbid virtually any extensions in the core.
>

... and of course the hyphenation bit in that core will have to change
soon(???), when it only makes sense to use fonts with `large glyph
collections'.


chris

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