[OS X TeX] problem with \renewcommand{}{\arabic{}}

[Ross Moore]

Hello Fabienne,

On 28/12/2008, at 12:03 AM, Fabienne Goldfarb wrote:

> Thanks again : I found the solution. If I use the babel package
> \usepackage[frenchb]{babel}
> it works correctly.
> But this is really strange that frenche works with miktex but not  
> with mactex.

Different line-endings may be causing a problem.

When I try your example, using TeXLive 2007, I see no such problem.

However, initially there is a failure to compile:


  frenchle.sty: -20b- the French language is undefined (ERROR!)
! -9- Corrupted/absent language.dat file..
\f at issue #1#2->#1{#2}
                      \@ifnextchar [{\@gobbleopt }{}
l.34 \begin{document}

?

  frenchle.sty : -48- Lecture du fichier de configuration de frenchle  
(\`a la li
gne 34).
(/usr/local/texlive/2007/texmf-dist/tex/latex/frenchle/frenchle.cfg) )
(\end occurred when \ifx on line 34 was incomplete)
No pages of output.

But that surely cannot be the cause of the problem.
A simple edit in  frenchle.sty  allows this difficulty to be bypassed,
and then (after switching the input encoding to utf8) there's
no real difficulty --- your problem did not materialise.



It looks to me like you have a macro redefinition
somewhere, redefining what  \arabic  does.
To confirm this hypothesis, put the following additions
around the  \begin{document}  command:

  \show\arabic
  \begin{document}
  \show\arabic

Watch the Console window (or .log  file), as you compile.
Note the messages that result, hitting the <return> key
after each time processing halts.

Those messages should give some clue as to what is going
wrong, and may lead you to find where \arabic  has been
inappropriately molested.

It may well be something strange within the hyphenation file
that  frenchle.sty  was looking for.
If so, I've no idea what it is or why it is there; but it
should be pretty obvious to spot, once you know which file
to look at.

>
> Fabienne
>
>> If you comment out the frenchle package, the issue will go away. I  
>> haven't tracked down the actual root of the problem, though.
>>
>> JK


Hope this helps,

	Ross

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Ross Moore                                       ross at maths.mq.edu.au
Mathematics Department                           office: E7A-419
Macquarie University                             tel: +61 (0)2 9850 8955
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