On Mon, Dec 10, 2001 at 10:07:02PM +0100, Artur R. Czechowski wrote:
> On Tue, Dec 04, 2001 at 01:22:32PM +0000, Julian Gilbey wrote:
> > Incidentally, why do we have/need a separate version of LaTeX for
> > typesetting in Polish? Is Babel inadequate?
> Good question.
> I'm using babel and it is sufficient for me. Sometimes I received
> files which required platex, that's why I also have it.
Contradiction...
platex bundle (the core *is* polski.sty), as other packages, can be used
with `standard' latex.fmt, provided that latex.fmt contains
polish hyphenation patterns. So instead of
\usepackage[polish]{babel}
one should just say
\usepackage[options]{polski} (not `polish' ;-)
Why not Babel? Because its polish option is rather primitive, and
it seems that nobody wants to change that mess...
The real question is: why do we have separate format platex.fmt?
1. it is the *cleanest* latex format as it can be, containing US-English
and Polish patterns.
2. it can be used `as it is' by many Polish users without knowledge how
to remake the format. It can be also ready-to-run from the CD or server,
etc. Please consider that most installations prepare latex.fmt
with English, German, French. (To be exact, we introduced in TeX Live6
the new concept of installation which prepares latex.fmt according
to selected `language collection', but it is not yet implemented in
teTeX, MiKTeX, TeX in Linux distributions, etc.)
3. Babel stuff is sometimes experimental, so to avoid problems we prefer
having just clean latex (on TL4 the only good latex was platex ;-).
4. I told *cleanest* somewhere above... As we read carefully the LaTeX
license, Babel additions by default when preparing latex.fmt are illegal.
See hyphen.cfg which introduce global definitions (e.g. \selectlanguage)
dumped into the format file. Let's wait for LaTeX3 and such
modifications in the core of LaTeX...
JG> In that way, we could do away with the complexities of having Yet
JG> Another Slightly Different Format.
OK, let's remove also frlatex, cslatex, mllatex, etc. No more comments.
The complexities we have in texmf/fonts, and it is the real playground.
--
Staszek Wawrykiewicz
email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
