Italian hyphenation

[gnoli]

Dear all, Italian hyphenation does not work neither in version 2.0.6. In this situation you beautiful word processor is useless for Italian audience !!!!

Please fix the bug as soon as possible, and free us from M$ Word

[martin]

Are you sure you have your hyphenation options set properly? I just tried and it seems to be hyphenating properly. For example, the word "primavera" was hyphenated as "prima-vera" instead of "pri-mavera".

Some things you should check:
1. Is your text marked as Italian? ie: is the language attribute set properly.
2. Do you have hyphenation enabled in your document? eg: via the menu View > Hyphenation.
3. Make sure you do not have hyphenation disabled for specific paragraphs via the menu Format > Paragraph > Prevent Hyphenation.

[MacSailor]

Will there be any Swedish hyphenation or is it a dead end for Swedish users regarding hyphenation in Swedish?

[Groucho]

Are you sure you have your hyphenation options set properly? I just tried and it seems to be hyphenating properly. For example, the word "primavera" was hyphenated as "prima-vera" instead of "pri-mavera".

The thing has improved but there are still a few glitches in the hyphenation engine. Words like costante, for example are hyphenated either co-stante (correct) or cos-tante (wrong), depending on the how long the line is. The simple rule is:

"S" preceding a consonant different from "s" should never be hyphenated. Eg: pre-sto, co-spicuo, tra-smissione; not pres-to, cos-picuo, tras-missione. Yet also: pres-sione, ades-so, arros-sire; not pre-ssione, ade-sso, arro-ssire.

Also, it would be great if NWP allowed at least two characters at line-end/-start. A hyphenation panel would be the top.

By the way, both pri-mavera and prima-vera (and primave-ra, too) are correct.

Cheers, Henry.

[ptram]

Unfortunately, Italian language support from Apple is sub-par. So, if Nisus relies on Apple's dictionary, there is little hope to see this improved. In Nisus, I use a keyboard shortcut to add manual hyphens when needed.

Paolo

[martin]

Unfortunately, Italian language support from Apple is sub-par. So, if Nisus relies on Apple's dictionary, there is little hope to see this improved. In Nisus, I use a keyboard shortcut to add manual hyphens when needed.

Nisus Writer actually no longer relies upon Apple for hyphenation. That used to be the case, but because Apple's hyphenation was so poor we added support for TeX hyphenation dictionaries. By default NWP uses several hyphenation dictionaries provided by OpenOffice, including Italian.

The thing has improved but there are still a few glitches in the hyphenation engine. Words like costante, for example are hyphenated either co-stante (correct) or cos-tante (wrong), depending on the how long the line is.

The hyphenation dictionaries are editable, if you're industrious enough to learn the TeX hyphenation patterns. The system actually isn't too complicated, and there are web pages that explain it. To explain briefly, the patterns look like this:

Code: Select all

2s2t1c
2s2t1d
2s2t1f

An odd number (1,3,5) indicates a hyphenation point, while even numbers (2,4,8) mean prevent hyphenation. Higher scores take precedence over lower ones.

You can find the hyphenation dictionaries that NWP uses in your home folder at:
~/Library/Application Support/Nisus Writer/Languages/Hyphenation
If you want to edit them, use a plain text editor, and make sure NWP is not running while you do so. You can also download and add additional dictionaries from OpenOffice's repository.

[martin]

Will there be any Swedish hyphenation or is it a dead end for Swedish users regarding hyphenation in Swedish?

It turns out there is a Swedish hyphenation dictionary in the OpenOffice repository. I don't know how good it is, but you could download it and add it to your copy of NWP by following the instructions on our hyphenation FAQ.

If you do try it out, we'd be happy to know how well it works. We can see about getting it added to the default NWP dictionaries.

[Groucho]

The hyphenation dictionaries are editable, if you're industrious enough to learn the TeX hyphenation patterns. The system actually isn't too complicated, and there are web pages that explain it. To explain briefly, the patterns look like this:

Code: Select all

2s2t1c
2s2t1d
2s2t1f

An odd number (1,3,5) indicates a hyphenation point, while even numbers (2,4,8) mean prevent hyphenation. Higher scores take precedence over lower ones.

I’ll see what I can do. Problem is LibreOffice uses the same patterns flawlessly.

Thanks, Henry.

[martin]

I’ll see what I can do. Problem is LibreOffice uses the same patterns flawlessly.

Let me look into that. Maybe they're using a different version of the TeX dictionary.

[NisusUser]

You can find the hyphenation dictionaries that NWP uses in your home folder at:
~/Library/Application Support/Nisus Writer/Languages/Hyphenation

The files that come from the .oxt file downloaded from http://extensions.libreoffice.org/exten ... leases/1.3 don't seem to be named the same as the ones I see in the mentioned folder for NWP (see other screenshot). (I had to change the .oxt file to .zip so I could access the files.)

Should I change the name of the .dic file hyph_lt.dic file to lt_LT.dic and put it in that hyphenation folder? Then will hyphenation work for Lithuanian?

[MacSailor]

Will there be any Swedish hyphenation or is it a dead end for Swedish users regarding hyphenation in Swedish?

It turns out there is a Swedish hyphenation dictionary in the OpenOffice repository. I don't know how good it is, but you could download it and add it to your copy of NWP by following the instructions on our hyphenation FAQ.

If you do try it out, we'd be happy to know how well it works. We can see about getting it added to the default NWP dictionaries.

Great news. I will download it, install it and give it a try.


Update: Now I have installed the necessary file(s) and it's working. As far as I can tell, it's working quite well.

[gnoli]

Unfortunately, Italian language support from Apple is sub-par. So, if Nisus relies on Apple's dictionary, there is little hope to see this improved. In Nisus, I use a keyboard shortcut to add manual hyphens when needed.

Paolo

Paolo, I used a lot of wp apps, included Apple Pages. All the hyphenation results for Italian are by far superior to that of Nisus. I think that modifying the spelling dictionaries by the users is too much difficult for the rest of us.
Now that Apple Pages 5.0 discontinued support for RTF the usability of Nisus in languages different from English is dramatically urgent.

TG

[ptram]

Paolo, I used a lot of wp apps, included Apple Pages. All the hyphenation results for Italian are by far superior to that of Nisus.

If this includes Mellel, I worked on the Italian hyphenation dictionary of one of the previous versions (I don't know if they are still using that one). As far as I could see, in the end it was not bad.

Using the Apple dictionary in previous Nisus versions produced very bad results. The current one is marginally better, but I could analyze the OpenOffice dictionary a few years ago (Mellel did use it), and it was extremely poor and inefficent. No wonder Nisus is not doing too well.

InDesign is far from perfect either, but is the best of the bunch. I've no idea of other dictonaries.

Paolo

[Groucho]

I downloaded Tex hyphenation file and made a comparison with the one that comes with Nisus. The two are slightly different. There are definitions in the latter that are not in the former, extra coding aside. In my opinion, Nisus’s seems better. That said, substituting a cleaned-up version of Tex hyphenation file for Nisus’s doesn’t change anything. I still get s-plus-consonant errors like cos-picuo and ris-torante (instead of co-spicuo and ri-storante). Looks like Nisus can overwrite, or add to, some of the rules.

Also I urge setting at least two characters as a hyphenation threshold. o-perare and cane-a, though correct, are decidedly ugly. This would help a lot.

Greetings, Henry.

[ptram]

If Nisus wants to clean up this matter, I guess we Italian users will be more than happy to help them. Bad hyphenation is more than embarassing: in some cases it might mean being disqualified.

Paolo