[tex-live] Re: texlive and babel/french/frenchle (Norbert Preining)

[Daniel Flipo]

Norbert Preining writes:

Is there something strange going on? Compiling a simple file
\documentclass{article}
%\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
%\usepackage[latin1]{inputenc}
\usepackage[french]{babel}
\begin{document}
Héllo World
\end{document}

(tried with/without fontenc/inputenc) produces strange results:
...

1) Many users get confused by the "french" option of babel,
which is ambiguous: it loads
-- frenchle.ldf (freeware from Bernard gaulle) or
   frenchpro.ldf (shareware from Bernard gaulle) if present
   on the system (in the path),
-- or frenchb.ldf otherwise.

The "official" .ldf file for French (integrated in babel) 
is frenchb.ldf *not* 'frenchle', *nor* 'frenchpro'.

To be sure to get 'frenchb' loaded, you should code
\usepackage[frenchb]{babel}
or
\usepackage[francais]{babel}

2) If you use diacritics ('é' in the above file)
   you should uncomment \usepackage[latin1]{inputenc}
   and add \usepackage[T1]{fontenc} or
   \usepackage{aeguill} or ... if you want correct
   hyphenation for words with diacritics.

   The above file compiled with \usepackage[frenchb]{babel}
   would produce no error, but would *not* print
   the 'é' (this is normal!).

=========================================================================
Daniel Flipo                                  Daniel.Flipo at univ-lille1.fr
UFR de Mathématiques -- Bâtiment M2           Tél : (33/0) 3 20 43 67 75
Université des Sciences et Technologies       Fax : (33/0) 3 20 43 67 74
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