[XeTeX] "new-babel", was: Ancient Greek hyphenation

[Will Robertson]

On 23/04/2007, at 2:01 , Joachim Trinkwitz wrote:

> Am 22.04.2007 um 12:17 schrieb Axel Kielhorn:
>
>> What is the purpose of the package?
>> 1. Select hyphenation patterns for the selected language.
>> 2. Select a font for this language.
>> 3. Setup typing direction (LTR, RTL, TTB) (interface to bidi?)
>> 4. Enable OTF support for the selected language. (using fontspec?)
>> 5. Enable language specific ligatures (and variants?) (again
>> fontspec).
>> 6. Selecting a color for the language, make that: Offer an
>> interface to
>> issue arbitrary commands when selecting a language.
> […]

I agree with all of those.
I don't know the best interface for it all though.

>> What will this package not support:
>> - Non-Unicode font encodings.

Goes without saying, on this list :)
I guess that'll upset the LuaTeX-like people.

>> - Translated strings for various latex names. (For this we need the
>> doclang package which provides a \documentlanguage command.)
>> - Language specific date formats. (Use isodate, which already  
>> supports
>> different formats)
>
> I think the latter two should be an integral part of the upcoming
> multilang package, because I usually want these features when I write
> in a specific language, without having to take to two additional
> commands.

Hmmm. I do think it would be a good idea to separate out these  
functionalities into other packages. But then  
"multilang" ("unilang"?) can load those other packages by default, as  
well as csquotes, and hook into what they provide.

Do csquotes' active character macros work in XeTeX at the moment?

Will