[XeTeX] babel

[Zdenek Wagner]

2012/9/3 Javier Bezos <listas at tex-tipografia.com>:
> François,
>
>
>> Some times ago, I read that babel will be compatible with xelatex.
>>
>> I would like to use babel with french and sanskrit languages, do I have
>> any chance to succeed?
>
Maintainig babel is important for (pdf)latex which is still in use but
for XeLaTeX I would suggest polyglossia which already works. You can
input the Devanagari text either directly in UTF-8 or in a
transliteration (including Velthuis) using the xetex-devanagari
package. You can request transliteration from Velthuis by
Mapping=velthuis-sanskrit (Mapping=velthuis is used for Hindi, you
will have to write explicitly viramas after the final consonants).
There are several Devanagari fonts available, for instance Nakula and
Sahadeva by John Smith or GNU FreeFont. You need at least release
20120503, in older releases the Devanagari block is incorrect. This
release is already packaged in TeX Live 2012. Devanagari in FreeSans
is derived from Gargi, thus it does not contain all Sanskrit
conjuncts, FreeSerif contains Velthuis glyphs. When the font is
loaded, it even obeys switching Language=Sanskrit and Language=Hindi
(the latter coresponding to the @modernhindi instruction in devnag).
Moreover, GNU FreeFont is most probably the only font with correct
spacing of Devanagari punctuation. I would certainly use Polyglossia +
GNU FreeSerif in XeLaTeX.

>
> Not yet -- I'm still working on it. For further info, see:
>
> http://www.tex-tipografia.com/babel_news.html
>
> An advance of the new manual is:
>
> http://www.latex-project.org/svnroot/latex2e-public/required/babel/babel.pdf
>
> Javier
>
>
>
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-- 
Zdeněk Wagner
http://hroch486.icpf.cas.cz/wagner/
http://icebearsoft.euweb.cz