In the directory xml-fop/conf you will find two configuration files. One of them, config.xml, is only intended for Fop developers, who want to add new default values to some Fop feature. Don't change this file. For user configuration there is a file called userconfig.xml. It contains templates for all settings a user can change. Most of them are commented out. Uncomment the entry you want to set and change the value according to your wishes. Please regard any comments which specify the value range. And, well, the configuration files are xml files, so keep them at least well-formed ;-)

The file userconfig.xml is not read automatically, but the user must specify its use on the command line. See Running Fop or Embedding Fop for details.

Fop comes already with some hyphenation pattern. If you need a hyphenation pattern which isn't included in the distribution, do the following:

1. get the TeX hyphenation pattern file and turn it into an xml file which conforms to the hyphenation.dtd in the sub directory /hyph

2. name this new file following this schema: languageCode_countryCode.xml. If you don't need a country code, leave it out, e.g the file name for an American english hyphenation pattern would look like this: en_US.xml. For an Italian file: it.xml. Language and country codes must be the same as in xsl:fo, that is follow ISO 639 and ISO 3166 respectively. NOTE: The ISO 639/ISO 3166 convention is that language names are written in lower case, while country codes are written in upper case.

3. If you have build your new hyphenation pattern file successfully there are two ways to make it accessible to Fop.

a) Put this new file into the directory /hyph and rebuild Fop. The file will be picked up and added to the fop.jar.

b) Put the file into a directory of your choice and specify this directory in the userconfig.xml in the entry <hyphenation-dir>.