[XeTeX] polyglossia bug (?) and conflict with "ledpar"

[Florian Grammel]

I just happily replaced babel with polyglossia 1.0.1 (from CTAN) and  
ran into two problems, both exemplyfied in the minimal example attached:

a) using font-commands like \textit inside polyglossia's "other  
language"-commands works as expected. But having e.g. \textfrench{...}  
outside one of these formatings doesn't have any effect on the output.
Babel renders both usages as italics - so I hoped polyglossia would,  
too.

b) calling the package "ledpar" in the header of my document I still  
get the same polyglossia-behaviour as described in a) when changing  
the language with \text<lang>-command. Strangely enough the  
\begin{lang}-environment does display italics in both cases, *but*  
inserts the language's name and a "]" into the text, where the switch  
occurs.

Are there any chances of getting this fixed or should I keep on using  
babel for the time being?
Best regards,
Florian.