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Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/18/84; site watdcsu.UUCP
Path: utzoo!watmath!watnot!watdcsu!haapanen
From: haapanen@watdcsu.UUCP (Tom Haapanen [DCS])
Newsgroups: net.internat
Subject: Re: Hyphenation
Message-ID: <1861@watdcsu.UUCP>
Date: Sat, 9-Nov-85 22:08:51 EST
Article-I.D.: watdcsu.1861
Posted: Sat Nov  9 22:08:51 1985
Date-Received: Sun, 10-Nov-85 08:50:09 EST
References: <471@harvard.ARPA> <773@mmintl.UUCP>
Reply-To: haapanen@watdcsu.UUCP (Tom Haapanen [DCS])
Distribution: net
Organization: U of Waterloo, Ontario
Lines: 27
Summary: 

In article <773@mmintl.UUCP> franka@mmintl.UUCP (Frank Adams) writes:

>Yes, and none of them are any good.  Have you seen the things those
>algorithms do?  The only successful hyphenation algorithm is to look
>the word up in a dictionary.

>There are probably more and better on-line dictionaries available for
>English than for any other language.  This is an issue that must be
>addressed.

Yes, some languages are quite easy to hyphenate.  FinnAPL idiom
handbook includes a one-liner in APL that correctly hyphenates about
90% of Finnish words; a friend added a few more lines and got it up
to, what I estimate to be between 99.5 and 99.9%.  It still misses on
	  __ _
	"haayoaie"	(no umlauts on vt240's)
which translates to "wedding night intention".  Oh well, that is
apparently the most consecutive vowels of any Finnish word.  The
correct hyphenation is haa-yo-ai-e, incidentally.


				   \tom haapanen
				   watmath!watdcsu!haapanen
Im all lost in the Supermarket
I can no longer shop happily
I came in here for that special offer
Guaranteed personality				 (c) The Clash, 1979