[tex-live] german.sty?

[Reinhard Kotucha]

On 2013-05-17 at 16:33:11 +0200, Werner LEMBERG wrote:

 > Karl,
 > 
 > in rev. 30301, the directory `tex/generic/german' has been deleted.
 > Are you aware that due to this change we no longer have `german.sty'?
 > I'm quite sure that there are zillions of documents having
 > 
 >   \usepackage[german]
 > 
 > which no longer can be compiled out of the box.  I don't dare to think
 > how many languages in total are affected by your deletion orgy on May
 > 7th.
 > 
 > Please fix this.  Another issue is, AFAIK, that the functionality of
 > Babel's `german' module is not completely identical to what
 > `german.sty' provides.  This is another reason IMHO to not delete the
 > file.

"not completely identical" is certainly an understatement.  They are
definitely incompatible.

  german.sty makes doublequotes active.

  Babel activates doublequotes AtBeginDocument.

In short:  The catcode of " depends on whether you're using german.sty
or Babel and this has an impact on other packages loaded afterwards.

Simply replacing german.sty by Babel is not an option due to the
catcode problems.

Regards,
  Reinhard

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Reinhard Kotucha                                      Phone: +49-511-3373112
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