Re: DOCBOOK-APPS: XEP for $80

[David Tolpin <dvd@renderx.com>]

> Nevertheless, "quite well" is a very subjective term. For some friends,
> TEX's old file (which doesn't hyphenate any words with diacritics but
> mostly works otherwise) is suitable. I had an extra job for being too
> purist in orthographic matters, but with XEP I couldn't even start, since
> we cannot correct or change its algorithm.

Marcelo,

if the current hyphenation class is not suitable for your needs you
may write and plug in your own. Hyphenator is loaded into XEP through
reflection, any hyphenation algorithm can be implemented. 

As you might have noticed, Java property

com.renderx.xep.HYPHENATOR 

sets hyphenator to be com.renderx.xep.cmp.TeXHyphenator;
the class's interface is well-defined and the functionality is easily extensible.

To start using software consider looking at it and at the accompanying
documentation. I really don't realize what all this hot air for. This is
the first complain on hyphenation quality, complex words are seldom and well
handled through exceptions, a standard feature of TeX hyphenation tables. 

TeX hyphenation tables are used for French, German, Russian, many European languages
with diacritics, Hebrew. I've just finished preparing one for Armenian. The fact
that one cannot prepare a hyphenation table for Portuese that handles diacritics
does not mean the algorithm is not capable of handling it.

Lack of hyphenation priorities in Liang's algorithms is well compensated 
by other techniques. It seems to me that your opinion is biased and not based
upon a weighed estimate of the tool you are talking about. I really don't see
where all this hot air comes from. 

David Tolpin
RenderX