[tex-hyphen] synonyms for language identifiers (for Arthur Reutenauer)

Arthur Reutenauer arthur.reutenauer at normalesup.org
Mon Aug 10 18:51:54 CEST 2015


	Hi Pablo,

On Thu, Jul 09, 2015 at 12:03:39AM +0200, Pablo Rodríguez wrote:
> I would like to ask you whether it would be possible to implement a
> basic feature in polyglossia.

  For requests relating specifically to Polyglossia it's best to create
an "issue" at https://github.com/reutenauer/polyglossia/issues/new --
the list of issues is also public and anyone can contribute to the
discussion (not that many do, but that's another problem).

> In short, would it be possible to implement language synonyms in
> polyglossia following the ISO 639 conventions.

  As I explained in my other email sent one hour ago, ISO 639 is
actually far from enough to tag in a useful way the languages TeX
distributions support on some level (you cannot identify "British
English" with it, for example); BCP 47 is a much better choice, and in
fact the only sensible choice, to the best of my knowledge.

  I've been meaning for a while to change the way languages and variants
are identified in Polyglossia by using BCP 47 tags instead of
semi-arbitrary strings, and provide a command such as
\setmainlanguagetag[en-GB] to set the main language as British English;
I actually suggested that to François on the very day he announced
Polyglossia (see http://tug.org/pipermail/xetex/2008-January/008221.html).
However this will also require a mechanism to support the current names,
for backward compatibility; and I would like to take the opportunity to
overhaul the internal mechanism that has several shortcomings and even
serious bugs, particularly with LuaTeX.

  It is definitely on my list, though, but it needs time to be
implemented.

> This feature would be extremely useful for pandoc. Otherwise it is
> really problematic to set the document main language to UK English.

  I don't really understand that: you only need to use
\setmainlanguage[variant=british]{english} instead of
\setmainlanguage{english}.  Is that too hard to set up in pandoc?

	Best,

		Arthur


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