[kadingira] Selecting languages

[Joseph Wright]

On 22/02/2018 17:37, Javier Bezos wrote:
> Hi all,
> 
> I think it's time to revamp the babel interface to select
> languages. Currently there are 4 ways:
> 
> -- \selectlanguage   (1)
> -- otherlanguage     (1)
> -- otherlanguage*    (2)
> -- \foreignlanguage  (2)
> 
> There is also an experimental \foreignlanguage* for a few
> lines of “reversed” text (R inside L or L inside R.)
> 
> There are two groups performing different tasks:
> 1) set \language (ie, hyphenation patters): -- 12
> 2) set hyphenmins -- 12
> 3) write the language to the aux files -- 1
> 4) switch captions and date -- 1
> 5) perform “extras” (ie, \extras... and \noextras) -- 12
> 6) set the font, if \babelfont is used -- 12
> 7) set the text direction -- 12
> 8) set the par direction (and boxes in lua) -- 1
> 9) ensure hmode (\foreignlanguage)
> 
> One of the things I'd like to do is decoupling the language
> in the babel sense from the language in the TeX sense. To
> make clear this distinction, babel will introduce the
> concept of locale, which is universally used elsewhere.
> 
> Just some preliminary thoughts.
> 
> Javier


Hi Javier,

All sounds good to me: I've wondered before about the fact that babel 
uses 'language'  where other approaches use 'locale'.

Joseph