Babel, a multilingual package for use with LATEX's ... - linsrv.net

It simply means you must reconfigure language.dat, either by hand or with the
tools provided by your distribution.
3 The interface between the core of babel and the
language definition files
The language definition files (ldf) must conform to a number of conventions,
because these files have to fill in the gaps left by the common code in babel.def,
i. e., the definitions of the macros that produce texts. Also the language-switching
possibility which has been built into the babel system has its implications.
The following assumptions are made:
• Some of the language-specific definitions might be used by plain T E X users,
so the files have to be coded so that they can be read by both L A T E X and plain
T E X. The current format can be checked by looking at the value of the macro
\fmtname.
• The common part of the babel system redefines a number of macros and
environments (defined previously in the document style) to put in the names
of macros that replace the previously hard-wired texts. These macros have to
be defined in the language definition files.
• The language definition files must define five macros, used to activate and
deactivate the language-specific definitions. These macros are
\〈lang〉hyphenmins, \captions〈lang〉, \date〈lang〉, \extras〈lang〉 and
\noextras〈lang〉(the last two may be left empty); where 〈lang〉 is either the
name of the language definition file or the name of the L A T E X option that is to
be used. These macros and their functions are discussed below. You must
define all or none for a language (or a dialect); defining, say, \date〈lang〉 but
not \captions〈lang〉 does not raise an error but can lead to unexpected
results.
• When a language definition file is loaded, it can define \l@〈lang〉 to be a
dialect of \language0 when \l@〈lang〉 is undefined.
• Language names must be all lowercase. If an unknow language is selected,
babel will attempt setting it after lowercasing its name.
• The semantics of modifiers is not defined (on purpose). In most cases, they
will just be simple separated options (eg., spanish), but a language might
require, say, a set of options organized as a tree with suboptions (in such a
case, the recommended separator is /).
Some recommendations:
• The preferred shorthand is ", which is not used in L A T E X (quotes are entered
as ‘‘ and ’’). Other good choices are characters which are not used in a
certain context (eg, = in an ancient language). Note however =, , : and
the like can be dangerous, because they may be used as part of the syntax of
some elements (numeric expressions, key/value pairs, etc.).
• Captions should not contain shorthands or encoding dependent commands
(the latter is not always possible, but should be clearly documented). They
should be defined using the LICR. You may also use the new tools for
encoded strings, described below.
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