[tex-live] Hyphenation patterns, Unicode, XeTeX, and language.dat

[Morten Høgholm]

On Thu, 17 Aug 2006 14:51:35 +0200, Jonathan Kew <jonathan_kew at sil.org>  
wrote:

> Then we modify the "language.__.dat" files in texmf/tex/generic/
> config to refer to the xu- wrapper files (in the cases where one is
> necessary), and the pre-built "language.dat" will change similarly.
>
> The net result will be that standard 8-bit TeX will load exactly the
> same patterns as it currently does (it'll just do some extra \input
> operations during format creation, but this is insignificant), and
> XeTeX will load the same set of patterns, but encoded for use with
> Unicode text.
>
>
> Before actually making changes to something as central as
> language.dat, however, I'd like to hear any concerns or objections to
> this proposed strategy, or alternative suggestions that could make
> things simpler for us all.

Rather than changing language.dat, wouldn't it be easier to add a hook  
like \patternfileprefix in hyphen.cfg and change \process at language  
accordingly:

\def\process at language#1 #2 #3/{%
  ...
   \input \patternfileprefix#2\relax
...}

Then a format like XeTeX can just define it in the ini file or elsewhere.
-- 
Morten