[XeTeX] babel or polyglossia?

[Ulrike Fischer]

Am Tue, 20 Oct 2009 13:27:22 +0200 schrieb Benjamin Koppe:

>> There is no urgend need to drop babel if you are using only german.
>> (Things are different if you are using languages with other
>> scripts).
> 
> I write ancient Hebrew and Greek as well, but not larger texts, but  
> rather single words or sentences. 

babel with option hebrew + greek are both problematic with xelatex
as they both use command that changes font encodings and this will
conflict with the font setup of fontspec. Perhaps you can mix babel
+ polyglossia. 

> And yes, it is getting clearer and  
> clearer to me that dropping babel would be wrong at the moment.  
> Especially since I found out biblatex is depending on it (though I  
> think there was some word that polyglossia can pretend to be babel).

That is really a problem. Polyglossia can probably mimic all the
necessary commands but to do this is would be necessary to know
which commands biblatex (and similar package with interfaces to
babel) are actual using. 

-- 
Ulrike Fischer