I want to create a hyphenation dictionary, where do I start?

[temiza]

I'm using Scribus to format a book in Maltese. There is no hyphenation dictionary for this language. Are there guides to creating a hyphenation dictionary? What is the format used? I would appreciate any pointers.

thanks!

[MrB]

Scribus uses the same format that libreoffice etc uses. We include a couple by default, but otherwise rely on a few options, sourced from the system via packages, via a LibreOffice etc install, or people can use the Scribus Resource Manager window to download them. Most of them are sourced via https://cgit.freedesktop.org/libreoffice/dictionaries/plain/. There's nothing there with the "mt" language either. It is not obvious that libreoffice has something elsewhere either. There may be a Maltese community that does this sort of work though such an an educational institution, ministry etc.
I suppose its not that hard to create the file but I don't know the formatting myself.

[a.l.e]

after mrb's post i had a short look into what are hyphenation dictionaries...

• mrb's link brings as to the list of all dictionaries for libreoffice
• i had a look on the italian and french "folders"
• in both cases the hyphenation dictionary was converted from the existing latex one (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LaTeX)
• there seem to be no maltese dictionaries for libreoffice or latex
• there is a maltese page for libreoffice but it does not seem to contain any link / resource specific to your language: https://mt.libreoffice.org/

so what you can do now?

i guess that the best is to get in touch with the libreoffice community or maintainer of a language that is close to maltese and see with them what you need to do for creating the language files for your language.

this having been said, i don't see any language pack for the european smaller / minority languages so it might be something that is hard to create / maintain...