[CS-FSLUG] Babel? Oh my ...
Eduardo Sanchez
lists at sombragris.org
Mon May 17 10:17:09 CDT 2004
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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