What’s new in babel 25.12

2025-08-03

Option mapdot

With mapdot=<text> as an option in ‘provide’, the standard counters (those starting with \the...) are traversed to replace each dot by the provided text in a locale-dependent way. Without a value, a default is used — currenty the only default value is for the Arabic (ar) locales, which is set to a hyphen (the zero and the dot are very similar in this script).

For example, with the default value:

\usepackage[arabic, provide={mapdigits, mapdot}, bidi=basic]{babel}

With a comma and a non-breaking space, it’s mapdot=،~.

This option doesn’t replace the definition of these macros by completely new ones. Instead, it modifies them. This replacement may fail in some classes (for example and interestingly, it works with bbook, but it doesn’t with the companion barticle).

Two notes:

• The space reserved for these counters (e.g., in the table of contents) remains unchanged. The standard classes have been designed with a certain font an a certain layout in mind, and if the counters are modified, some formatting glitches may appear (usually minor). This is general problem, not restricted to the this particular adjustment, but I think it’s worth mentioning because it’s often overlooked.

• \label doesn’t currenty save the language. It’s a general problem, too, in the sense \label actually saves nothing about the context. Keep this in mind in multilingual documents, because the corresponding \ref may not be what you would expect if the script is different.

Fixes

• Fix misaligned first line with kashida inside a \vbox (tsx747027).