[tex-live] Serious (?) problem with Babel and language attributes

[Manfred Lotz]

Hi Norbert,
I tested the latin example with TeX Live 2008, 2009, 2010 and 2011. All
the same wrong.

It baffles me because I cannot imagine that all authors who introduced
\languageattributes didn't test their stuff. Or in other words: at some
point in time at least one of those attributes must have worked in
some language.

-- 
Manfred



On Mon, 2 Jun 2014 09:54:59 +0900
Norbert Preining <preining at logic.at> wrote:

> Hi everyone,
> 
> I don't know *when* this mess started, but it seems that
> the other language attributes are also broken.
> 
> And it seems the bug is not in the ldf files, but in the babel *core*.
> 
> But at least I have to say, they are broken since long, because
> I tried below test case also in Debian/TeX Live 2012 (!) with
> the same outcome.
> 
> $ cat test.tex
> \documentclass{article}
> \usepackage[latin]{babel}
> \languageattribute{latin}{medieval}
> \begin{document}
> \november
> \end{document}
> $
> 
> This document *should* produce
> 	Nouembris
> if I am right ... the code in latin.ldf:
> \bbl at declare@ttribute{latin}{medieval}{%
>   \addto\captionslatin{\def\prefacename{Pr{\ae}fatio}}%
>   \def\november{Nouembris}%
>   \expandafter\addto\expandafter\extraslatin
>   \expandafter{\extrasmedievallatin}%
>   }
> 
> But what comes out is
> 	Novembris
> ???
> 
> I copied latin.ldf to the local dir, and added a \message which
> resulted in:
> $ pdflatex latintest.tex 
> This is pdfTeX, Version 3.14159265-2.6-1.40.15 (TeX Live 2014)
> (preloaded format=pdflatex) restricted \write18 enabled.
> entering extended mode
> (./latintest.tex
> LaTeX2e <2014/05/01>
> Babel <3.9k> and hyphenation patterns for 78 languages loaded.
> (/home/norbert/tl/2014/texmf-dist/tex/latex/base/article.cls
> Document Class: article 2007/10/19 v1.4h Standard LaTeX document class
> (/home/norbert/tl/2014/texmf-dist/tex/latex/base/size10.clo))
> (/home/norbert/tl/2014/texmf-dist/tex/generic/babel/babel.sty
> (./latin.ldf
> (/home/norbert/tl/2014/texmf-dist/tex/generic/babel/babel.def)))
> HELLO activated medieval (./latintest.aux)
> [1{/home/norbert/tl/2014/texmf-var/f
> onts/map/pdftex/updmap/pdftex.map}] (./latintest.aux)
> )</home/norbert/tl/2014/t
> exmf-dist/fonts/type1/public/amsfonts/cm/cmr10.pfb> Output written on
> latintest.pdf (1 page, 12311 bytes). Transcript written on
> latintest.log. $
> 
> So it seems that the babel core executes some more init stuff at
> begin document, which overrides the attribute settings.
> 
> As said, same on TL2012, 2013, 2014 ... uahhh
> 
> 
> I don't know how to test the other attributes, but grepping for
> 	declare at ttribute
> on all the babel files gives me quite some:
> babel/babel.def:\def\bbl at declare@ttribute#1#2#3{%
> babel-bulgarian/bulgarian.ldf:\bbl at declare@ttribute{bulgarian}{abvoff}{%
> babel-czech/czech.ldf:\bbl at declare@ttribute{czech}{split}{%
> babel-estonian/estonian.ldf:\bbl at declare@ttribute{estonian}{notilde}{\addto\extrasestonian{\bbl at deactivate{~}}}
> babel-greek/greek.ldf:\bbl at declare@ttribute{greek}{polutoniko}{%
> babel-kurmanji/kurmanji.ldf:\bbl at declare@ttribute{kurmanji}{<attrib>}{%
> babel-latin/latin.ldf:\bbl at declare@ttribute{latin}{medieval}{%
> babel-latin/latin.ldf:\bbl at declare@ttribute{latin}{withprosodicmarks}{%
> babel-russian/russianb.ldf:\bbl at declare@ttribute{russian}{ancient}{%
> babel-slovak/slovak.ldf:\bbl at declare@ttribute{slovak}{split}{%
> 
> That does not look very promising :-(
> 
> Norbert
> 
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> PREINING, Norbert
> http://www.preining.info JAIST, Japan
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