Message-Id: <199402020956.AA11382@mail.cs.tu-berlin.de>
Reply-To: Mailing list for the LaTeX3 project <LATEX-L@DHDURZ1.BITNET>
In-Reply-To:  <9402020943.AB12005@m1.cs.man.ac.uk> (message from Richard Walker
              on Wed, 2 Feb 1994 18:05:59 +1100)
Date:         Wed, 2 Feb 1994 09:55:24 GMT
From: David Carlisle <carlisle@cs.man.ac.uk>
Sender: Mailing list for the LaTeX3 project <LATEX-L@DHDURZ1.BITNET>
To: Multiple recipients of list LATEX-L <LATEX-L@DHDURZ1.BITNET>
Subject:      Re: Language numbers
Status: R

>>>>> "Richard" == Richard Walker <Richard.Walker@AU.EDU.ANU.CS> writes:

Richard> Is there an `official' numbering of \languages for use with
Richard> 2e?  E.g. 0=US English, etc.  If not, isn't it time we
Richard> decided on one?  Maybe one of the working groups is already
Richard> working on this and would like to comment?

Richard> Richard.

Having such a fixed numbering scheme would be a bad idea, just as it
would be a bad idea to fix \count33 to be the `section counter'.
For counters one uses \newcounter (or \newcount). For languages
what you want is a top level that allows you to have a \language
counter asociated with a particular (real) language, and then access
functions that effect the language switch without you ever knowing
which number was allocated at the primitive TeX level.

Babel provides such an interface already for 2.09, and will be
appearing for 2e once Johannes gets some time:-)

David