[CS-FSLUG] Babel? Oh my ...

[Eduardo Sanchez]

Well listpeople, this is just to share a weird story hoping to save 
someone a few headaches.

As you know, I am a Slackware user, running right now Slack 9.1. I also 
happen to be both a LaTeX user and a Spanish speaker. Now, while I was 
using my Slack 9.1, I had to use 00.org for most of my text documents 
due to the nature of my work.

However, when I had to go to Latex again to do some text processing. 
When it was the time to process my file, something looked horribly 
wrong. Then I realized what it was: The hyphenation was for English 
instead of Spanish! For example, the word "Seminario" was hyphenated as 
"Sem-inario" instead of the correct "Semi-nario".

Then, when I saw the log for the file, I was able to find this:

================================================================
(/usr/share/texmf/tex/generic/babel/babel.sty
Package: babel 2001/03/01 v3.7h The Babel package

(/usr/share/texmf/tex/generic/babel/spanish.ldf
Language: spanish.ldf 2001/01/30 v4.1c Spanish support from the babel 
system

(/usr/share/texmf/tex/generic/babel/babel.def
File: babel.def 2001/03/01 v3.7h Babel common definitions
\babel at savecnt=\count87
\U at D=\dimen103
)

Package babel Warning: No hyphenation patterns were loaded for
(babel)                the language `Spanish'
(babel)                I will use the patterns loaded for \language=0 
instead.
================================================================

but I knew I had hyphenation patterns for Spanish! Moreover, I did use 
Latex in Slack 9.0 and it worked flawlessly! I was dumbfounded to say 
the least.

I checked in my texmf directory hierarchy, and I found alright the 
language definitions:

================================================================

[eduardo: /usr/share/texmf] $ ls tex/generic/config -al
total 24
drwxr-xr-x   2 root root 4096 2003-03-08 21:56 .
drwxr-xr-x  22 root root 4096 2003-03-08 21:56 ..
-rw-r--r--   1 root root 2905 2001-09-27 06:45 fontmath.cfg
-rw-r--r--   1 root root 2905 2001-09-27 06:45 fonttext.cfg
-rw-r--r--   1 root root 3710 2004-05-17 10:12 language.dat
-rw-r--r--   1 root root 2904 2001-09-27 06:45 preload.cfg
================================================================

Peeking on language.dat I found something revealing. The Spanish 
hyphenation patterns were commented out.

================================================================
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
% The following languages are disabled by default. Uncomment what you 
need.
% To enable, remove %! and the space.
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
%! bahasa       inhyph.tex
%! basque       bahyph.tex
%! croatian     hrhyph.tex

[...] 

%! slovene      sihyph23.tex
%! spanish      sphyph.tex
%! turkish      trhyph.tex
================================================================

So I was happy as a clam. I uncommented the line for Spanish, and off I 
went. But when I tried to process that Latex file again, I got the same 
message! Perhaps Latex was not aware of the changes, so I ran texhash, 
to rebuild the internal file tree that Latex uses; but to no avail.

I was really perplexed and especially frustrated because I couldn't make 
this Latex Spanish-aware in something as important as the hyphenation 
patterns. As a last resort, I searched the web. Well, after some 
looking, I found an obscure PostScript file (in Spanish) at this URL:

http://numerix.us.es/curso/curso2.ps

This file had the info I needed. It turned out that after doing your 
changes to language.dat, you must rebuild latex.fmt, using this 
command:

# /usr/share/texmf/bin/initex /usr/share/texmf/tex/latex/base/latex.ltx

this gives you a brand-new latex.fmt and latex.log file. You must 
replace the existing latex.fmt at the location $TEXMF/web2c/latex.fmt 
with the new one.

Only after that I was able to hyphenate in Spanish properly.

Weird, isn'it?

Blessings,


Eduardo
-- 
Prof. Eduardo Sanchez
Asuncion, Paraguay, South America
--------------------------------------------------------------
 That ev'n buried Ashes such a snare
 Of Vintage shall fling up into the Air
   As not a True-believer passing by
 But shall be overtaken unaware.

	-- The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam
	   

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