Babel Installation Guide
20 February 2004
When you install the babel system you have first to decide
whether you want to make a new format file. If you don't, you
miss some of the functionality of the babel system, but you
can then skip steps 2 through 6 . If you do want to build a
new format, start with step 1.
When you want to produce the full listing of all the source
files in the babel system run babel.drv through LaTeX, then
use MakeIndex to produce babel.ind using the command:
makeindex -s bbind.ist babel
and use MakeIndex to produce babel.gls using the command:
makeindex -s bbglo.ist -o babel.gls babel.glo
Then run LaTeX on babel.drv again.
1 Make sure that you have the Docstrip (version 2) program
available (it is part of the LaTeX2e distribution); then
run the file babel.ins through TeX.
This strips all the .dtx files of the comments and produces
fast loadable versions of the files.
The installation files that are part of the babel
distribution all contain \usedir{tex/generic/babel}
commands. The effect of this is that TeX will attempt to
write the files it produces into your TDS compliant
directory tree. If you have a different tree you should
either change these commands or comment them out. Using the
file docstrip.cfg you can instruct docstrip about the `root'
of the TDS tree. On my Win95 TeX-Live installation I have:
\BaseDirectory{D:/TeX-Local/texmf}
%\BaseDirectory{D:/TeX-Live/texmf}
\UseTDS
whereas on my Linux installation I use:
\BaseDirectory{/usr/local/TeX}
%\BaseDirectory{/usr/TeX/texmf}
\UseTDS
If all of these are correct and TeX still complains about
not being able to store the files it is possible that the
file texmf.cnf prohibits writing into the system trees.
Look for the line with openout_any; if it's value is 'p'
(paranoid) change it to 'r' (restricted).
If all of the above doesn't work for you (or you commented
out the \usedir lines) you will have to move the resulting
.ldf, .sty, .def, .cfg and .fd files yourself into a
directory where TeX can find them.
Do that now.
On some operating systems you might get an error message
such as:
! I can't write on file `./catalan.sty'.
<to be read again>
\edef
l.455 }
Please type another output file name:
In such a case you have run into a maximum number of open
files limit in your computer. You can get around this by
telling docstrip to open less files at a time (from bug
report Babel/2592, answer by David Carlisle):
As long as you have a reasonably new copy of docstrip,
you can make a docstrip.cfg file at your site to tell
docstrip that you have operating system limits on the
number of open files.
Make a file docstrip.cfg with the two lines:
\maxfiles{8}
\maxoutfiles{8}
and docstrip will keep below 8 the number of files it has
open. (You may need to experiment to see how large your
system lets you make these numbers, the default is 16)
See docstrip.dtx
% \subsection{Setting maximum numbers of streams}
for more details.
Docstrip also produces two files called babel.drv and
user.drv. You can use babel.drv to produce the full
documented source listing of the babel system. (Which is
also provided as babel.dvi) You can use user.drv to produce
a short document that describes the features of each
language specific file.
2 Make sure you have the hyphenation patterns available for
the languages that you intend to use. If you don't have
them, you may be able to find them in CTAN, in the directory:
/tex-archive/language/hyphenation.
If you happen to have a set of patterns that is not
available there you could make it available by either
putting it in the /incoming directory or sending it to me.
3 The docstripping process will have produced a file called
hyphen.cfg. This file will be loaded when you build a
LaTeX format. To build a plain format with the babel system
preloaded you can use the file bplain.tex as a wrapper for
plain.tex. When you run it through iniTeX plain.tex will be
loaded, as well as hyphen.cfg. When you type \dump at the
end you will get bplain.fmt which you can use as your
plain TeX format. Renaming hyphen.tex to something else is
not permitted by Don Knuth.
4 Check the hyphenation patterns that you have available and
want to load into the format. For each language that you
want to hyphenate correctly you need a hyphenation pattern.
List them all in the file `language.dat'. The file that is
in the distribution serves as an example of what you have to
put in there.
The files containing hyphenation patterns should be found
somewhere on TeX's `input path'. What that means depends on
the implementation of TeX you use:
- With emTeX there is an environment variable TEXINPUT in
which you can list the directories to search through,
adding a ! to a directory will make emTeX do a recursive
search through the directory tree.
- With Unix TeX the `system directories' do not need to be
specified in the environment variable TEXINPUTS; there
adding a double / to a directory name means recursive
searching of the directory tree.
5 Run iniTeX, telling it to load your favorite macro package
(ie plain or latex).
When you build a LaTeX format iniTeX will find the file
hyphen.cfg (provided that you have stored it in the
correct place).
When you build a plain TeX format using the supplied file
bplain.tex iniTeX will also find hyphen.cfg.
*Beware*: some implementations of TeX only look in the
current directory when the \openin primitive is used. If
your TeX does that you need to put the file `languages.dat'
in the same directory where you build your format.
6 When the iniTeX run in step 5 stops with a message about
not enough memory (trie_size = ...) and "you can ask a
wizard to enlarge me" You have tried to load more
hyphenation patterns into TeX's memory then it has room for.
In that case you can either remove one or more languages
from the file language.dat or be your own wizard and enlarge
TeX. I can not tell you how to do that for all
implementations of TeX as it differs with each
implementation. Your distribution should contain a
description of what to.
- With emTeX you can influence the size of some of the
memory arrays with command line switches (/mt:65000 for
the trie_size).
- With Unix TeX you have to change a file called tex.ch and
rebuild TeX using the supplied Makefile. The change you
need to make is to enlarge the trie_size and
trie_op_size.
- With Web2C TeX (version 7 and newer) you can change the
value of the trie_size in the file web2c/texmf.cnf.
--- Copyright 2004 Johannes Braams. All rights reserved ---
