[bug #61919] are the new English hyphenation patterns really an improvement?

[G. Branden Robinson]

Update of bug #61919 (project groff):

                  Status:               Duplicate => Need Info              
             Open/Closed:                  Closed => Open                   
                 Summary: wrong(?) hyphenation (word division) of "material"
(for "FOR-RELEASE")) => are the new English hyphenation patterns really an
improvement?

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Follow-up Comment #4:

Hi, Dave!

[comment #3 comment #3:]
> [comment #2 comment #2:]
> > Not only is the subject of this ticket subsumed by existing
> > bug #57594,
> 
> Hmm, the last sentence of the original submission is subsumed by #57594, but
it's not clear the rest is.  Though maybe we have different perspectives on
what constitutes "the rest":
> 
> > but the exact issue, down to the very word, that Bjarni
> > raises was addressed in a commit message and ChangeLog entry.
> 
> The issue was certainly _mentioned_ in the commit message.  But that the
original Knuth hyphenation patterns gave results for "material" (and other
words) that agreed with the dictionary, and that the current Knuth+Kuiken ones
violate the typical dictionary hyphenation for "material" (and other words,
some far more egregiously), remains unaddressed.
> 
> This is a much larger issue than the single word Bjarni highlighted, but
that word is symptomatic of a legitimate problem that warrants some discussion
amongst a larger audience.  (Yes, yes, I need to revisit and finish that email
draft.)
> 
> But just as a sanity check: do you see any of the divisions under the NEW
column as improvements over their OLD brethren?

Mostly not.  I agreed with you on this point and nearly said so when resolving
the ticket.

I had/have two biases operating:

* a desire to see bugs against the project closed
* a desire to rule out issues as "not our problem"

The second is perhaps more defensible in this case, as it's questionable
whether we have the human power to maintain groff as-is, let alone take on an
independent multilingual hyphenation data base/algorithm project.

So I do have an inclination to say, "if the Knuth+Kuiken hyphenations are bad,
take it up with the TeX hyph-utf8 project".  I really don't want that mess on
our plate.

But alternative resolutions may exist; we could go back to the old patterns,
for instance.

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