Message-Id: <199402021153.AA15069@mail.cs.tu-berlin.de>
Reply-To: Mailing list for the LaTeX3 project <LATEX-L@DHDURZ1.BITNET>
Date:         Wed, 2 Feb 1994 11:49:54 GMT
From: Philip TAYLOR <CHAA006@VAX.RHBNC.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

It is rare (unknown?) for me to take issue with David Carlisle, but when
he writes:

>> 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:-)

I think a little supplementary information may be in order.  The functionality
to which David refers is surely fundamental, being defined in Plain.TeX rather
than being dependent on the use of Babel.  The latter may well be a wonderful
package for multilingual TeX, but Knuth himself had the forsight to provide the
\newlanguage macro...

                                        Philip Taylor, RHBNC