What’s new in babel 3.53

2021-01-26

Templates in \setlocalecaption

\setlocalecaption has been extended to recognize the templating mechanism already available in ini files for some captions, explained in What’s new in babel 3.48. It can be used in ldf files, too. Usage is simple:

\setlocalecaption{japanese}{chapter.template}{[[prechapter]] [chapter] [[postchapter]]}

This new feature is related to issue #111.

\babelprovide with ldf files

Until now, \babelprovide was not allowed without the optional argument when the language was loaded as the ldf file. However, now some ini files provide additional features which can be useful, like counters. Therefore, this restriction has been lifted.

See also: Using \babelprovide to modify or extend locales.

The language incubator

Creating an ldf file for babel can be intimidating. Although with ini files new locales can be defined more easily, ldf ones are still preferred in most cases. In tools there is an HTML file providing a simple way to create a simple language definition file, with a (more or less) graphic user interface (GUI) based on JavaScript. It’s still rudimentary, but even so you may find it a very convenient way to, at least, start the work.

Currently only the skeleton, the minimal structure, is generated. Anyway, it can be used directly, even if it is not fully adapted to the typographical conventions.

Remember there are still about 500 ini files which can be used as templates if you prefer this mechanism.

Changes in ini files

Captions for Sinhala, contributed by Nisal D Bandara.

Fixes

• In some rare cases, a parenthesis was mirrored at the end of math with bidi=basic
• Not really a fix, but I started working on picture with bidi in lua. While the text is LR, at least the graphical elements are rendered correctly (see issue #98).