What’s new in babel 3.51

2020-10-27

Common interface to redefine captions

The way strings for captions are defined has evolved to overcome some limitations in older versions, and as a result there were several procedures to modify them, depending on the language or how the language is loaded. Now they can be redefined with \setlocalecaption, as for instance:

\setlocalecaption{english}{contents}{Table of Contents}

Here the second argument is the caption name as string without the trailing name. This example also shows caption names are often a stylistic choice, not just a language one.

This works not only with existing caption names, because it also serves to define new ones by setting the caption name to the name of your choice (name will be postpended, so that annex defines \annexname). Captions so defined or redefined behave with the ‘new way’ described in the manual (that is, the ‘switcher’ and the captions string are separate macros).

Fixes

• Error when loading a language on the fly in tabular (#97).
• hyphenrules raised an error with ‘base’ option (#59).
• Better handling of autoloaded languages (eg, catcodes).
• An error was raised with CJK and a null font (#99) in luatex.
• language.tag.bcp47 and tag.ini in \localeinfo didn’t work (#102).

Known issues (and request for help)

[Update. Fixed both issues.]

⚠ As of 2010-10 layout=graphics doesn’t work with picture anymore. I’m investigating how the new code for pict2e (v 0.4) works to find a solution (v 0.3 worked), but it can take me some time. Feel free to make a pull request with a fix, if you have found it. (Issue #98). Workaround: Instead of layout=graphics, add in the preamble \AddToHook{env/picture/begin}{\bodydir TLT} and then mark explicitly the text language.

⚠ Some ‘exotic’ combinations like bold + small caps may not work if there is not a global font declaration with \babelfont{...}{...} (without the first optional argument). The usual 4 basic combinations should be fine. (Issue #92)

Changes in ini files

• Set frenchspacing to yes in many files, including Dutch and Icelandic (#49).