[XeTeX] Question about polyglossia and babel

[Philip Taylor (Webmaster, Ret'd)]

Dominik Wujastyk wrote:
> I've been puzzled for a while because my TL2010 distribution appears to
> load Babel by default very early in the format file.
>
> E.g.,:
>
>     $ xelatex
>     This is XeTeX, Version 3.1415926-2.2-0.9997.4 (TeX Live 2010)
>       restricted \write18 enabled.
>     **\relax
>     entering extended mode
>     LaTeX2e <2009/09/24>
>     Babel <v3.8l> and hyphenation patterns for english,...

I don't think this started at TL 2010, Dominik; I have recollections
of seeing Babel mentioned early in the log file in earlier releases,
and in a sense it was part of what I looked for to see if TeX or
LaTeX had been invoked.

** Phil.