Downloads

• If you are using a TeX distribution like TeX Live, the Irish hyphenation patterns are installed by default and chances are you don't need to download anything special from this site. On my (Debian-based) Linux system, it was enough to install the package texlive-base.
• If for some reason you need to download the TeX patterns file hyph-ga.tex directly, you can find it on CTAN, or the latest version is always available from our GitHub repository.
• Older versions of TeX and programs like GNU troff use an ASCII-only version of the hyphenation patterns named gahyph.tex. This file is also available from CTAN, or from our GitHub repository.
• The patterns can be used with OpenOffice.org by installing this extension.
• The corresponding extension for LibreOffice can be downloaded from the LibreOffice extension site.
• The file hyph_ga_IE.zip (for use with Scribus, or with LibreOffice/OpenOffice.org if you'd rather not install the above extensions) can be downloaded from an OpenOffice.org mirror or from our GitHub repository.
• The file ga.xml for Apache FOP or Folio can also be downloaded from GitHub.
• The patterns are integrated directly into the Hyphenator.js source code, which comes with good documentation.

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LaTeX Usage

To typeset an Irish document in LaTeX, simply add the lines

\usepackage[irish]{babel}
\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}
\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}

to the preamble and compile using LaTeX as usual. This sets the default language of the document to Irish. If you need to include some English passages, change the “babel” line above to:

\usepackage[english,irish]{babel}

and use \selectlanguage in the body of the document as follows:

\begin{document}
Tá sé thar a bheith éasca fleiscíní
a chur san áireamh anois.

\selectlanguage{english}
We don't talk no foreign talk
round these here parts.

\selectlanguage{irish}
Bainfidh mé úsáid as an acmhainn iontach seo.
\end{document}

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Important Remarks

• TeX inserts a discretionary break after explicit hyphens within words; this has the (mostly desirable) effect that explicitly hyphenated words will only be broken at the hyphen.
• This is fine for Breac-Ghaeltacht or Ard-Aighne, but not for t-idirnáisiúnachas. You will have to add your own discretionary hyphens if such a word needs to be broken, e.g. t-idir\-náisiún\-achas.
• Conversely, you may want to prevent breaks at “t-” or “n-”; for this you can enclose the word in an \mbox.
• Similar remarks hold for words containing apostrophes.
• Since amh-ras is a legal hyphenation, it follows that drochamh-ras should be also, though naturally one would much prefer droch-amhras. Unfortunately TeX has no mechanism for assigning “weights” to different hyphen points in the same word, so you will have to beware of such examples on your own.
• See the list of known bugs at the end of the Details page.