Re: [Vim-latex-devel] Re: [Vim-latex-cvs] A little review...

[Mikolaj M. <mi...@wp...>]

On Fri, Jan 17, 2003 at 09:22:33AM -0500, Benji Fisher wrote:
>      I redirected this from Vim-latex-cvs to Vim-latex-devel .
>      I think this is going to be helpful in the long run.  In the short 
> run, I am afraid that the whle system may be unstable for a while.  I 
> would have started a new branch for this.
>      We should document how the system works.  Parts of your e-mail, 
> quoted above, can serve as a draft.  See
> :help syntax-loading
> for one model.
>      The rest of my comments are pretty minor.
>      You did not (yet) take my suggestion about packages/german-babel 
> and so on.  Is this because you did not like the idea, or just because 
> you had a lot of other things on your mind?  Again, the point is that 
> packages/german does nothing more than set smart-quote options, but (1) 
> this may change and (2) polski already does much more.

It looks like german package is part of babel system which is
responsible for i18n of LaTeX. Babelization makes only few (but
important) things: hyphenation, local letters, renew sectioning and
similar commands maybe typographic rules.

You can for example do that:
------------------
\documentclass[a4paper]{book}
\usepackage[german,polish]{babel}
\begin{document}
\selectlanguage{polish}
\chapter{Halo to ja}        <- Here will be Rozdział (Chapter)

Hello world. Here you can use Polish letters.
\selectlanguage{german} 
\chapter{Halo}              <- Here will be Kapitel

Hello another world. Here will be umlauts.
\end{document}
------------------

But preamble can be defined in other manner:
\usepackage{babel}
\usepackage{polish}
\usepackage{german}

Or according to docs even
\documentclass[a4paper,german,polish]{book}
\usepackage{babel}

But latter two styles don't work flawlessy for me. Only first gives no
errors. Second gives errors but work as expected and third works no at
all.

I am uploading "regular" babel package file - with latex commands and
options without specialized functions.

About 'polski'. 'polski' is not a part of 'babel' system. This is
completely separate, standalone package wich makes much more than option
polish in 'babel' package. There is no option polski in 'babel', only
polish. 

>      If "ngerman" is given as an option to the babel package, then the 
> "german" package will be :source'd.  This will work fine.  Do we want it 
> to work this way in general?  I think there are (at least) two versions 
> of french; can they also be treated the same way?  I would rather parse 
> g:Tex_babel_options and, for each option given (Is it legal to give more 
> than one?) :source the appropriate file if it exists.

Here is problem. For some languages, are separate files which works
alone (german, ngerman, french). I am not mentioning 'polski' here
because its name is different from babel option.

IMO here stuff should be duplicated. Create separate file german, which
is sourced after \usepackage{german} is detected (normal behaviour), and
section in babel file package (if..elseif..endif) which will be
triggered after detecting an option for babel package. Options for ther
rest of languages would be in 'babel' file. But what about 2nd or 3rd
types of declarations? I think we should drop it.  Too much
work for something which is kinda broken (at least for me...).

Maybe other non-english users could say something about their usage of
LaTeX? Luc, Fabio?

Mikolaj