# patgen - generate patterns for TeX hyphenation - man(1) - [phpMan] [_PATGEN_(1)](https://www.chedong.com/phpMan.php/man/PATGEN/1/markdown) General Commands Manual [_PATGEN_(1)](https://www.chedong.com/phpMan.php/man/PATGEN/1/markdown) ## 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_ available as part of the TeX Live distribution or at _. 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 hyphen‐ ation algorithm and the external representation of the lower and upper case version(s) of all `letters' of that language. Further details of the pattern generation process such as hyphen‐ ation levels and pattern lengths are requested interactively from the user's terminal. Op‐ tionally _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 se‐ quences, 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 start‐ ing in column 1. A digit in column 1 indicates a global word weight (initially =1) ap‐ plicable to all following words up to the next global word weight. A digit at some inter‐ character 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 reading 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 representations of that character (first the `lower' case one used for output), each one terminated by the delimiter and the whole sequence terminated 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 terminal. First the integer values of _hyph_start_ and _hyph_finish_, the lowest and highest hyphen‐ ation level for which patterns are to be generated. 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 analyzed, as well as _good_ _weight_, _bad_ _weight_, and _threshold_, the weights for good and bad hyphens and a weight threshold for useful patterns. Finally the decision (`y' or `Y' vs. anything else) whether or not to produce a hyphen‐ ated word list. ## FILES _$TEXMFMAIN/tex/generic/hyphen/hyphen.tex_ The original hyphenation patterns for English, by Donald Knuth and Frank Liang. _ Additional hyphenation patterns for English, extended by Gerard Kuiken. _ Collected hyphenation patterns for many languages in many formats. _ General CTAN directory for 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. the‐ sis, 1983, . 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 2023 16 June 2015 [_PATGEN_(1)](https://www.chedong.com/phpMan.php/man/PATGEN/1/markdown)