[tex-live] new babel in TL

[Mojca Miklavec]

On Tue, May 7, 2013 at 1:01 PM, Robin Fairbairns wrote:
> Mojca Miklavec wrote:
>
>> thank you very much for this import.
>>
>> A few points that I would like to mention:
>>
>> - I suggest to put serbian and serbianc into the same babel package if
>> possible (both is Serbian, but one is in cyrillic script)
>
> unless someone complains by tonight (when i'll next work on it, i'll do that

Thank you.

>> - I know that you mentioned it, but I would still suggest to review if
>> names match between babel-lang and hyph-lang. Just as an example,
>> there is hyph-slovenian and babel-slovene. (I have deliberately chosen
>> "slovenian" for hyph and even the document "babel-slovene/slovene.pdf"
>> says "The Slovenian language". The name "slovene" as filename probably
>> remained just for "compatibility" reasons.) Other examples are
>> babel-portuges, norsk, ...
>
> this is not new: we are generating a new setup from existing files.  in
> other words, you could have complained ages ago.

To Braams you mean?

(Babel never was any of my business, but when packaging is being done
"from scratch", it makes sense to do it right. I also never complained
about the naming scheme of various inconsistently named hyphenation
patterns (except for my native language), but when the files were
imported to hyph-utf8, we tried to do it properly.)

Oh, and BTW, I did complain. On Tue, 16 Jan 2007 I wrote an email to
J. Braams (I probably don't need to say that I never got a reply). On
Tue, Jan 16, 2007 I wrote to Karl and Jonathan Kew. And on Fri, Jan
19, 2007 I wrote to CTAN (if you keep archives, you can probably find
my email).

Problems with wrong codes and names for hyphenation were all fixed
back then (at least for my native language), but Babel wasn't.

> i shall add these things to the list of "to do".
>
>> - In the same spirit: there are some languages like "babel-frenchb" or
>> "ukraineb" just because there is "frenchb.ldf". However, there is
>> "germanb.ldf" and still "babel-german" and not "babel-germanb". My
>> suggestion would be to call the package "babel-french",
>> "babel-ukrainian" and not "babel-frenchb". If ever four other packages
>> for French pop up, they can all go to babel-french, no matter how they
>> will be called. The list is not extensive, I just listed the first few
>> languages that I noticed.
>
> i've never been quite sure why these "language-name"b versions exist.
> (except in the case of languages like french, where the are lots of
> alternative babel packages.)

I don't know either, but I suspect the reason was the same as for
French. Someone fixed the previous version, uploaded version "b" and
after a while the original version was gone. But that's pure
speculation.

>> - I miss at least Lithuanian
>> (http://www.ctan.org/tex-archive/language/lithuanian/tex/generic/babel/)
>
> please use mirror.ctan.org/language/...  you know it makes sense (and it
> saves on dante's paid-for bandwidth)

I'm sorry. I'll try to be more careful next time.

(Still, the links to download files point to the mirrors and the
mirrors don't have the nice GUI for browsing. Also, I usually
copy-paste from the browser and as soon as I enter a mirror myself, I
would end up copying the literal URL instead of the generic one.)

>> - I suggest to delete furlan.ldf (or rather: ask Claudio Beccari to
>> give permission to delete it). I removed the language synonym for
>> hyphenation patterns soon after adding it and this is a relatively new
>> file anyway. The author didn't know what he was supposed to do with
>> synonyms.
>
> won't delete without claudio's approval.

OK, I'll ask him.

>> - I'm just curious: why are these ldf files in TEXMF/tex/generic
>> rather than TEXMF/tex/latex?
>
> presumably because they'll work under plain.  babel was designed to work
> that way, from the very start (before context became a public entity,
> for sure).

I'm sorry. I wasn't aware that babel also works with plain TeX. I
thought it was for LaTeX only.

>> Given a high chance that something could go wrong at our side, I would
>> prefer to release the promised hyph-utf8 based on the old babel and a
>> new version based on the new babel a few days later.
>
> "new babel" as modified from your comments above?

No, I meant new babel 3.9e vs old babel 3.8m (or something like this).

> please note that the
> ctan work progresses slowly, and is unlikely to be complete this month.
> to delay hyphenation stuff on that basis would seem to me a woeful
> mistake.

This doesn't apply since the new babel is already there. The
organization of files luckily doesn't influence hyph-utf8, but changes
in core files do, a little bit, in particular for LuaTeX.

Mojca

(Is Javier reading this list?)