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<DIV><FONT size=2 face="Arial Unicode MS">Hello</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2 face="Arial Unicode MS"></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2 face="Arial Unicode MS">It recently became apparent that XeTeX
has Babel preloaded (something I hadn't realized), and Karl Berry
kindly provided some eplain code allowing easy invocation of the different
hyphenation patterns, viz.:</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2 face="Arial Unicode MS"></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV>\eplainsetlanguage{portuguese}{2}{3}</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2
face="Arial Unicode MS">using:</FONT><BR><BR>{\catcode`@=11<BR>\gdef\eplainsetlanguage#1#2#3{%<BR>
% do not set the language if the name is undefined in the current TeX.<BR>
\expandafter\ifx\csname <A href="mailto:lang@#1\endcsname">lang@#1\endcsname</A>
\relax<BR> \message{no patterns for #1}%<BR>
\else<BR> \global\language = \csname <A
href="mailto:lang@#1\endcsname">lang@#1\endcsname</A><BR> \fi<BR> %
but there is no harm in adjusting the hyphenmin values regardless.<BR>
\global\lefthyphenmin = #2\relax<BR> \global\righthyphenmin =
#3\relax<BR>}<BR>}<BR><BR><FONT size=2 face="Arial Unicode MS">This works nicely
in XeTeX, and I have now tried the code in an old EmTeX distribution (which I
sometimes have to use for a long-standing job that will take years to
complete). The code itself processes without fuss, but then tells me that
the language patterns for e.g. Latin are not found (i.e. the error message built
into the above code). That's hardly surprising since the EmTeX
distribution doesn't have Babel preloaded. I was hoping to find that I
could simply \input the appropriate Babel code (just as one can say \input
soul.sty to get the SOUL package to work), but although the older Babel
documentation that I have found says it will work with plain TeX without the
need to create a special format, I haven't been able to discover how to invoke
Babel from within a plain TeX file.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2 face="Arial Unicode MS"></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2 face="Arial Unicode MS">Does anyone know how to do
this?</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2 face="Arial Unicode MS"></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2 face="Arial Unicode MS">And apologies if that isn't a question
for this list - I couldn't see another Babel-dedicated list (and suspect
that nearly all current Babel users employ flavours of LaTeX).</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2 face="Arial Unicode MS"></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2 face="Arial Unicode MS">Thanks in advance</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2 face="Arial Unicode MS"></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2 face="Arial Unicode MS"></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2 face="Arial Unicode MS">John</FONT></DIV>
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