[XeTeX] Θέμα: Re: Final word on Greek hyphenation?

[Bruno Voisin]

Le 23 nov. 06 à 16:46, Apostolos Syropoulos a écrit :

> Since the hyphenation patterns of the xetex-greek
> package are incompatible with the greek option of the
> babel package (their encodings are simply
> incompatible), it
> makes no sense to typeset using babel and xetex-greek.

With XeTeX (and Omega/Aleph/etc.) allowing direct use of Unicode  
fonts, it makes no sense keeping babel the way it is.

I hope that, with XeTeX included in TeXLive and the popularity and  
visibility of XeTeX growing, there will be enough incentive for  
preparing a next-generation babel, replacing the all-in-one present  
approach by a modular one in which the different functions would be  
clearly separated:

- Selection of hyphenation pattern.

- Definition of language-specific LaTeX strings (\chaptername,  
\sectionname etc.).

- Implementation of language-specific typographic conventions.

- Choice of font, of writing direction (left-to-right or right-to- 
left, top-to-bottom or bottom-to-top).

- Addition of language-specific macros (such as shortcuts for  
entering language-specific accents, etc.).

- Whatever.

In this way it would become possible to separate more clearly what's  
already implemented at the font level and what remains to be  
implemented at the TeX level.

But for sure making babel modular is no trivial task! I don't know  
what the aims of the LaTeX 3 project are in this respect.

Bruno Voisin