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From: req@warwick.UUCP (Russell Quin)
Newsgroups: net.internat
Subject: Re: Hyphenation
Message-ID: <336@snow.warwick.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 2-Dec-85 07:04:25 EST
Article-I.D.: snow.336
Posted: Mon Dec  2 07:04:25 1985
Date-Received: Thu, 5-Dec-85 06:57:40 EST
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Reply-To: req@warwick.UUCP (Russell Quin)
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A number of people have been discussing the TeX hyphenation algorithm & disag-
reeing about whether it is perfect|acceptable|terrible.

So let's took a look at a book that was set using TeX: Ullman's ``Principles of
Daabase Systems'' was published by the Computer Science Press.

I agree that there are ferwer hyphens in the book than there would have been
had it been set by troff, but that is not the point.

Below is a list of the hyphenations it used, roughly in the order in which they
appear, in the 1st 100 pages.
They vary between being perfectly acceptable and abysmal.  I was surprised by
"entity-rel- ationship" and "MO- THERS", but there are several others where the
pronunciation changes over the line break.

Clearly, TeX is *NOT* the be-all-and-end-all in automatic hyphenation.  If it
had only alerted the (presumably human) users when it had difficulties, they
might have been able to do something.
To be fair, careful proof-reading can help eliminate some of these horrors,
paricularly things like 3 consecutive lines being hyphenated, or two
consecutive lines ending in the *same* hyphenated word (broken at the same
point).  Both of these last two problems occur in the book.

I have included a few comments in the list, and marked 1 word that changes pro-
nunciation in England when it is thusly hyphenated, as it might not do so in
some parts of America.

Now, how many rules did TeX break?  How could it be improved?  (Answers
invloving the use of rm(1) will *not* be considered.  We don't run TeX, anyway)

		- Russell

infor- mation				there- fore	(on P.50)
presum- ably				set- ting
per- son				or- ganization	(line set loose)
respon- sibility			stor- age
descrip- tion				dele- tions
pro- grammers				con- venience
physi- cal				opera- tions
per- sonnel				con- sist
concep- tual				them- selves
lan- guages				occur- rences
manipu- lation				imple- mented
depend- ing				SS_ NO	(a variable name)
manipula- tion				ad- vantage
MO- THERS	(a variable name)	struc- tured
MO- THER_OF	(a variable name)	prefer- ably	(changes pronunciation!)
restric- tions				repre- sented
signif- icance				ex- hibit	(line set loose)
gen- eric				ap- proaches	(line set loose)
undir- ected				Stone- braker	(A proper name)
sys- tems				entity-rel- ationship	(!!!)
map- pings				con- fusion
rela- tions	(repeated on consecutive lines)
con- trived				SUP- PLIERS	(a variable name)
relation- ships
im- plementation
bidirec- tional
par- ticular
com- pany
EM- PLOYEES	(a variable name)
INGREDI- ENT	(a variable name)
respec- tively
opera- tion
follow- ing
com- puting
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