[XeTeX] xetex+babel, was: missing everything

[Bruno Voisin]

Le 19 janv. 06 à 09:25, Martin Henning a écrit :

> though it seems to me the babel-package is very important for many  
> people... i guess people using xetex don't use it that much? how do  
> they get localized hyphenation and correct names for date/chapter/ 
> introduction/blah? only the russian part with the weird encodings?  
> can't be like that... so many other easter-european languages where  
> babel does the same thing! :) maybe as of now xetex is rather being  
> used to generate the really fancy (for eurpean/american/... eyes at  
> least) stuff such as arabic etc...

I looked also at babel.pdf and it seems that, for most languages  
except those using Latin alphabets, babel is simply incompatible with  
XeTeX. For example, the Russian option in babel selects by default  
the T2A encoding which, in turns, supposes specific fonts named  
something like larm according to the various .fd files inside / 
Library/teTeX/share/texmf.tetex/tex/latex/cyrillic/ (I'm not even  
sure these fonts are installed by default).

It may be possible to use or create switches so as to disactivate all  
but the hyphenation and section naming etc. mechanisms in babel, but  
I would tend to think this is simply not worth the trouble. In my  
case I can use babel with XeTeX in documents containing text partly  
in French and partly in English, but this is because both languages  
use only the Latin alphabet so that babel does not impose any font or  
encoding setting, and because the French option provides a switch  
\StandardLayout to disactivate most of the disastrous initiatives  
taken by babel in terms of item spacing in lists, choices of bullets  
also in lists, construction of ellipsis character, etc.

Beware, too, in case you're willing to use babel and modify some of  
its settings, that any redefinition of a babel construct in the  
preamble of a LaTeX document is better put inside an  
\AtBeginDocument. For example:

\StandardLayout
\AtBeginDocument{%
   \renewcommand{\bibname}{Références}
   \renewcommand{\contentsname}{Sommaire}
   \renewcommand{\figurename}{Figure}}
\newcommand{\foreignhyphen}[2]{\begin{hyphenrules}{#1}#2\end 
{hyphenrules}}

Hope this helps,

Bruno Voisin