introduction to groff en español (was: About hyphenation)

[G. Branden Robinson]

Hi Walter,

At 2023-08-26T12:42:06+0200, Walter Alejandro Iglesias wrote:
> Recently I found some groff manual written in Spanish (standalone, not
> a translation of the groff manual in English)

I followed your link and found it here:

https://cartaslinux.files.wordpress.com/2016/12/manual_groff.pdf

This is terrific!  I can even read it, if slowly, and with occasional
recourse to a Spanish-English dictionary.  I read the first dozen or so
pages closely, then skimmed the rest, recognizing several examples from
existing groff documentation but also noting much that was original.

Overall, yes, I'd say this is an original work, and it's a shame it took
(apparently) nearly 7 years to come to this list's attention.

Would you like to contact the author and put him or her in touch with
us?  I see it's credited to "P. L. Lucas" with a CC-BY license, which
is free enough for the FSF.[1]

It might be nice to add this manual to contrib/ for the groff 1.24
release alongside the proper Spanish localization support that is
already committed to our Git repository.  See
<https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/groff-commit/2023-07/msg00104.html>
et seqentia.

> the author had the idea of generating a list of words with the .hw
> request with a script.  I tried this method and I got a better
> hyphenation than reading the patterns file from LaTeX with .hpf, as
> I've been doing for years.

I would be curious know how this approach compares to using `.hla es`
(or simply `.mso es.tmac`) in groff Git.

> I explain all in this article:
> 
>   http://en.roquesor.com/hyphen.html

"The author of the manual of the previous link [...] invested all his
time in learning machine languages leaving little for his mother
tongue,"

Since the (immediately) previous link in your article was to groff's
Texinfo manual, I was taken aback and laughed aloud at first, trying not
to feel ribbed.  Then I realized that reading the above quote in full:

"The author of the manual of the previous link had an excellent idea,
using a script (he wrote one in python, as it appears in his manual) he
generates a file with all the words of the document to be edited, with
this he could dispense with the file with LaTeX patterns.
Unfortunately, it seems that the author of this manual invested all his
time in learning machine languages leaving little for his mother tongue,
in his python script he did not take into account diphthongs, hiatuses
and other rules for correct hyphenation in Spanish."

...it had to describe the manual you just brought to our attention, not
groff's "official documentation".  And I had made no contribution at all
to groff's documentation yet back in 2016.  I'll have to wait and see
what future critiques of my writing style hold.  My ego will be checked
one way or another.  🤣

Thanks again for bringing this resource to light.

Regards,
Branden

-- boring copyright license politics follow --

[1] https://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.en.html#OtherLicenses

    Caveat: this document attempts to steer people toward the GNU FDL
    for documentation at the expense of perfectly fine alternatives.  My
    opinion of the FDL can be found elsewhere.[2]  Nota bene: The
    problem is not copyleft, but the license option of "invariant
    sections"--deliberate exclusions from the FSF's essential freedom 1.
    [3]

[2] e.g., https://lwn.net/Articles/2862/
[3] https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.en.html#four-freedoms

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