Fw: Re: [css3-text] Hyphenation Resources

[Cameron McCormack <ca...@mcc.id.au>]

Hi fop devs.

There is discussion on www-style@w3.org about hypenation dictionary
formats, and FOP was mentioned.  Does someone have the knowledge to
comment there?

----- Forwarded message from John Daggett <jd...@mozilla.com> -----

From: John Daggett <jd...@mozilla.com>
Date: Mon, 31 Jan 2011 23:36:59 -0800 (PST)
To: www-style list <ww...@w3.org>
Cc: liam@w3.org, jfkthame@gmail.com
Subject: Re: [css3-text] Hyphenation Resources
Archived-At: <ht...@cm-mail03.mozilla.org>


Looking at this a tiny bit more, it appears that the AH format is
actually based on FOP:

  http://xmlgraphics.apache.org/fop/1.0/hyphenation.html

I'm curious if folks working on XSL/FOP feel that the formats and
algorithms used for automated hyphenation have been sufficiently
flushed out enough to allow for a common format?  Or would it be
better to allow user agents room to innovate and then define
something later?

John Daggett

cc'ing Liam Quinn

----- Original Message -----
From: "John Daggett" <jd...@mozilla.com>
To: "www-style list" <ww...@w3.org>
Sent: Tuesday, February 1, 2011 4:15:08 PM
Subject: [css3-text] Hyphenation Resources

The current CSS3 Text spec defines a 'hyphenation-resource' @-rule:

  http://dev.w3.org/csswg/css3-text/#hyphenation-resource

This was based on a similar property defined in CSS3 GCPM:

  http://dev.w3.org/csswg/css3-gcpm/#the-hyphenate-resource-property

However, neither of these reference or define a syntax for the
hyphenation resource. Effectively, these are UA-specific
resources when defined this way.  As such, I don't see any reason
for supporting either the @-rule or the property in the current
form; they're both effectively vendor-specific properties with
*no* interoperability between user agents.  I think the format
should be defined/referenced explicitly or it should be removed
from the spec and left to a vendor-specific property.

For example, Antenna House uses this syntax:

  http://www.antennahouse.com/product/ahf50/hyp_dictionary.htm

Would this be a suitable format to require?  Or is there another
publicly available format that would also suffice?  Maybe
something from TeX would work?  What does Prince use?

I think one argument will be that CSS doesn't specify formats for
other types of resources such as images.  But in the case of
images there were already well-supported image types, so it
wasn't really necessary to specify these to achieve some form of
interoperability.  The same is not true for hyphenation
dictionaries.

Regards,

John Daggett





----- End forwarded message -----

-- 
Cameron McCormack ≝ http://mcc.id.au/

Re: [css3-text] Hyphenation Resources

[Jeremias Maerki <de...@jeremias-maerki.ch>]

Hi Cameron

I'm not sure if it is feasible to have/create a standardized format. I
guess it makes sense to stay as close to LaTex as possible. FOP just put
the patterns into an XML format (using Unicode). It seems to work fine
for us. Java-based CSS3 implementation could easily re-use FOP's
hyphenation module. We rarely have inquiries on the user list concerning
hyphenation.

The larger issues is the mess of licenses for the various patterns which
is why we've had to move the patterns outside to http://offo.sf.net
because we can't fulfil the Apache Foundation's license policy. Tracking
down individual authors of the original pattern files and getting
permission to put them under the ALv2 turned out to be a tedious task.
Not all authors can be contacted. So today, the users would essentially
have to check for themselves if the license restrictions are fine for
their particular use case.

There was once a discussion about looking toward OpenOffice (probably
rather LibreOffice today) for re-use of their hyphenation modules. But
that hasn't happened probably due to effort that would need to be
invested for the change. I haven't looked into that closely myself. But
it could be another option for CSS3 implementations.

That said, it would certainly be very very useful to have a good set of
widely usable hyphenation patterns that have a clear, uniform and
permissive license. The current situation is less than ideal for Apache
FOP.

HTH

On 01.02.2011 09:04:21 Cameron McCormack wrote:
> Hi fop devs.
> 
> There is discussion on www-style@w3.org about hypenation dictionary
> formats, and FOP was mentioned.  Does someone have the knowledge to
> comment there?
> 
> ----- Forwarded message from John Daggett <jd...@mozilla.com> -----
> 
> From: John Daggett <jd...@mozilla.com>
> Date: Mon, 31 Jan 2011 23:36:59 -0800 (PST)
> To: www-style list <ww...@w3.org>
> Cc: liam@w3.org, jfkthame@gmail.com
> Subject: Re: [css3-text] Hyphenation Resources
> Archived-At: <ht...@cm-mail03.mozilla.org>
> 
> 
> Looking at this a tiny bit more, it appears that the AH format is
> actually based on FOP:
> 
>   http://xmlgraphics.apache.org/fop/1.0/hyphenation.html
> 
> I'm curious if folks working on XSL/FOP feel that the formats and
> algorithms used for automated hyphenation have been sufficiently
> flushed out enough to allow for a common format?  Or would it be
> better to allow user agents room to innovate and then define
> something later?
> 
> John Daggett
> 
> cc'ing Liam Quinn
> 
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "John Daggett" <jd...@mozilla.com>
> To: "www-style list" <ww...@w3.org>
> Sent: Tuesday, February 1, 2011 4:15:08 PM
> Subject: [css3-text] Hyphenation Resources
> 
> The current CSS3 Text spec defines a 'hyphenation-resource' @-rule:
> 
>   http://dev.w3.org/csswg/css3-text/#hyphenation-resource
> 
> This was based on a similar property defined in CSS3 GCPM:
> 
>   http://dev.w3.org/csswg/css3-gcpm/#the-hyphenate-resource-property
> 
> However, neither of these reference or define a syntax for the
> hyphenation resource. Effectively, these are UA-specific
> resources when defined this way.  As such, I don't see any reason
> for supporting either the @-rule or the property in the current
> form; they're both effectively vendor-specific properties with
> *no* interoperability between user agents.  I think the format
> should be defined/referenced explicitly or it should be removed
> from the spec and left to a vendor-specific property.
> 
> For example, Antenna House uses this syntax:
> 
>   http://www.antennahouse.com/product/ahf50/hyp_dictionary.htm
> 
> Would this be a suitable format to require?  Or is there another
> publicly available format that would also suffice?  Maybe
> something from TeX would work?  What does Prince use?
> 
> I think one argument will be that CSS doesn't specify formats for
> other types of resources such as images.  But in the case of
> images there were already well-supported image types, so it
> wasn't really necessary to specify these to achieve some form of
> interoperability.  The same is not true for hyphenation
> dictionaries.
> 
> Regards,
> 
> John Daggett
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> ----- End forwarded message -----
> 
> -- 
> Cameron McCormack ? http://mcc.id.au/




Jeremias Maerki