How creating new language (package, styles,babel script?)

Question

I write a dictionary of artificial language. Where is any tutorial how creating new language. I have 12 unicode characters and 2 characters in two different representations and normal romna and greek characters. (join 2 glyphs for example o+' = ó) Some characters have dots on top (similar i or 2 dot) and ogonek (similar cedila?).

Answer 1

From TeX's viewpoint, a "language" is only a set of hyphenation patterns to allow the processor's paragraph breaking algorithm to do its typesetting job: hyphenating a paragraph. So, once you have figured out the phonotactics of your conlang, you only need to define a set of hyphenation patterns as the argument of a \patterns command (and an optional list of \hyphenation exceptions), and define it as the next \language for the iniTeX's/LuaTeX processor. So, for instance, for lilipu, the following lilihyph.tex file may be made:

\begingroup
\lefthyphenmin=2 \righthyphenmin=2
\catcode`\'=11 % the glottal stop ' is a consonant!
\patterns{1k 1l 1m 1p 1v 1'}
\endgroup
\endinput

The details of this operation are explained in Appendix H of the TeXbook.

Now, how do you activate the "language" depends on your format and engine: LaTeX and eTeX (the now fashionable formats), on pdf[enc]TeX, XeTeX or LuaTeX (the Unicode aware engines) have slightly different approaches; so your mileage may vary. To add your language hyphenation file For LaTeX and bplain you need to edit the language.dat file and add the line

lilipu lilihyph.tex

for eTeX based formats you need to edit the language.def file

\addlanguage{lilipu}{lilihyph.tex}{}{2}{2}

Then you may use babel's or etex's interface to activate your language settings.

In terms of experimenting, I strongly recommend you to use the Plain format with the LuaTeX engine: LuaTeX is fully Unicode aware, and loads hyphenation patterns directly, without going to reassemble the formats.