[XeTeX] babel or polyglossia?

[Ulrike Fischer]

Am Mon, 19 Oct 2009 22:35:37 +0200 schrieb Benjamin Koppe:

> Hi,
> I just thought about dropping the use of packeges ngerman and/or babel  
> and switch to polyglossia, as this seems to be the better choice  
> around xetex. Somehow I could not get German quotation marks working.
> Usually there is either the \glqq and \grqq commands, or rather the  
> shortcuts "`and "'
> Neither of them works with
> 
> \usepackage{polyglossia}
> \setdefaultlanguage[spelling=new,babelshorthands]{german}
> 
> Are the quotation marks handled with another package? Or is there any  
> reason to drop babel (actually I just felt like being up to date to  
> switch, can't yet see a big reason).

There is no urgend need to drop babel if you are using only german.
(Things are different if you are using languages with other
scripts). I would consider it if babel shorthands like "= or "~ were
working as polyglossia tries to implements them without making " an
active character. But currently (polyglossia.sty 2009/01/25 v1.0.2)
they simply don't work for me:

\listfiles
\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{fontspec}
\usepackage{polyglossia}
\setdefaultlanguage[spelling=new,babelshorthands]{german}

\begin{document}
Nordrhein"=Westfalen
Nordrhein"~Westfalen
"<abc">
"`abc"'
\end{document}

I would also prefer if polyglossia wouldn't allocate specific char
classes but would use \newXeTeXcharclass (or whatever the name of
the macro is) instead. 

-- 
Ulrike Fischer