spanglish dialect proposal
Luis Rivera
This message is meant for Spanish-speaking LaTeX users, or those
interested in Spanish typography with Babel.
Almost every time I try the spanish option of the babel package I run
into trouble. For most of my stuff I use iso-8859-1 (aka Latin 1),
which does the job, and then I load the spanish option of the babel
package. Unfortunately, this package makes so heavy hacking on catcodes
etc. to implement "classical" Spanish typography that makes it pretty
useless to most users this side of the Atlantic (I'm writing from
Mexico).
So I think it would be worth it to implement a "spanglish" or
"Latin-American Spanish" dialect to the babel package: this package
would only load Spanish strings for sectioning and labels, and load the
hyphenation patterns (and perhaps font encoding and french spacing)
automagically. The result would be somewhat bizarre for the purist
(perhaps Peninsular users), but pretty reasonable for those of us
living South the Rio Grande.
I'm already working on that, but I'd like to check with the base to see
what's reasonable to do...
Cheers,
Luis.
mjsoto
> Almost every time I try the spanish option of the babel package I run
> into trouble. For most of my stuff I use iso-8859-1 (aka Latin 1),
> which does the job, and then I load the spanish option of the babel
> package. Unfortunately, this package makes so heavy hacking on catcodes
> etc. to implement "classical" Spanish typography that makes it pretty
> useless to most users this side of the Atlantic (I'm writing from
> Mexico).
I've also run into troubles when using spanish.ldf + mathtime, due to
heavy redefinition of operators such as \lim and other. I know there
are some commands built in spanish.ldf to prevent such redefinitions
(thus, it doesn't qualify as a bug), but documentation is cleverly
hidden [*].
In fact, for many documents, I keep in the folder a `stripped down'
spanish.ldf.
> So I think it would be worth it to implement a "spanglish" or
> "Latin-American Spanish" dialect to the babel package: this package
> would only load Spanish strings for sectioning and labels, and load the
> hyphenation patterns (and perhaps font encoding and french spacing)
> automagically.
[snip]
> I'm already working on that, but I'd like to check with the base to see
> what's reasonable to do...
I for one heartily agree. I'd like a simplified spanish in next babel
releases, instead of having
to keep multiple local copies of "stripped down spanish".
> Cheers,
>
> Luis.
m.j.soto
[*] By cleverly hidden, I mean it isn't obvious _to me_ where to find
it: nothing relevant
comes up searching for "spanish" in ctan search forms. In fact, when I
looked for it, I had to
go to cervantex's faq, to learn that the most recent documentation is
archived as http://perso.wanadoo.es/jbezos/archive/spanish.pdf (that
is, not
in ctan), and _that_ is a dead link.
Javier Bezos
> I've also run into troubles when using spanish.ldf + mathtime, due to
> heavy redefinition of operators such as \lim and other. I know there
> are some commands built in spanish.ldf to prevent such redefinitions
> (thus, it doesn't qualify as a bug), but documentation is cleverly
> hidden [*].
>
> [*] By cleverly hidden, I mean it isn't obvious _to me_ where to find
> it: nothing relevant
> comes up searching for "spanish" in ctan search forms. In fact, when I
> looked for it, I had to
> go to cervantex's faq, to learn that the most recent documentation is
> archived as http://perso.wanadoo.es/jbezos/archive/spanish.pdf (that
> is, not
> in ctan), and _that_ is a dead link.
It seems the FAQ is obsolote at this respect. The correct link is:
http://www.texytipografia.com/archive/spanish.pdf
This was the second result when I googled for "manual babel spanish"
(and the first result was related to it).
As to the new style, see my reply on (in Spanish):
Let me say I don't understand why a style file has to be forked before
ever contacting with the author of the original one, but...
Javier
---------------------------------------------
http://www.texytipografia.com
Javier Bezos
A few comments:
> Almost every time I try the spanish option of the babel package I run
> into trouble.
IIRC, I've received no complaint from you until now.
> etc. to implement "classical" Spanish typography that makes it pretty
> useless to most users this side of the Atlantic (I'm writing from
> Mexico).
>
> So I think it would be worth it to implement a "spanglish" or
> "Latin-American Spanish" dialect to the babel package: this package
Spanglish _is not_ the same as not Latin-American Spanish
at all. They are quite different things. I find spanglish
quite fascinating (perhaps a new language was born?) but
it's not certainly comparable to, say, the Argentinian
variant of the Spanish language.
> would only load Spanish strings for sectioning and labels, and load the
> hyphenation patterns (and perhaps font encoding and french spacing)
> automagically. The result would be somewhat bizarre for the purist
> (perhaps Peninsular users), but pretty reasonable for those of us
> living South the Rio Grande.
Your side of the Atlantic is _huge_ and below the Rio
Grande there are lots of countries. Sorting the rules
out for all these countries is not simple and this task
is taking me a lot of time. Some things to be considered
in Mexican Spanish are, for example:
- quotes (" « ' ' » " instead of « " ' ' " »)
- "tabla" instead of "cuadro"
- decimal mark as period (even if the Mexican law
stablishes the comma; in fact, there will be a
mexican-legal option which uses comma)
- (maybe) uppercase titles is captions
It happens that in, say, Argentina, decimal mark is
the ISO and Spanish one (comma), so a different option
has to be develpped for it. And quotes are very often
the guillemets. I decided to begin with the country
with more differences (Mexico, which, by the way, is
in North America and not in South America, as implied
in your post to es.comp.lenguajes.tex) for this very
reason.
A development version of spanish 5.0 is avaliable on:
http://www.texytipografia.com/spanish.html
Comments and suggestion (and collaboration!) are most
welcome.
Javier
---------------------------------------------
http://www.texytipografia.com
jos...@gmail.com
The spanish-speaker TUG CervanTeX was born (unofficially, 13 years
ago!) with the objetive of NOT DUPLICATE TASKS. In this time, we have
four hypenation files for spanish!
If there is a project for create an spanglish dialectal, please
coordinate with the work groups of CervanTeX. Is free, is the spirit of
free software and evite confusion and duplicate tasks.
Thanks!
Luis Rivera
Javier Bezos wrote:
> Luis:
>
> A few comments:
>
> IIRC, I've received no complaint from you until now.
>
I didn't care much for complaining; basically I circumvented the
problem by avoiding spanish.ldf at all :-)...
>>
> Spanglish _is not_ the same as not Latin-American Spanish
> at all.
>
Conceded. That was a bad idea. The `language' is now named
`mesoamerican'. See below...
> Your side of the Atlantic is _huge_ and below the Rio
> Grande there are lots of countries. Sorting the rules
> out for all these countries is not simple and this task
> is taking me a lot of time. [...]
>
Indeed, I appreciate your concern; as a matter of fact, I just recently
learned that the weirdos here are us, Mesoamerican speakers. Most
Southern American users follow Spanish lead. So the largest divergence
here is between Peninsular/Southamerican Spanish and Mexoamerican
users. I don't know; perhaps forking really is the simplest solution...
> A development version of spanish 5.0 is avaliable on:
>
> http://www.texytipografia.com/spanish.html
>
Thanks for the link!
Cheers,
Luis.
P.S. Should we continue this thread in Spanish in
es.comp.lenguajes.tex? Or maybe in es-tex on rediris?
Javier Bezos
> Indeed, I appreciate your concern; as a matter of fact, I just recently
> learned that the weirdos here are us, Mesoamerican speakers. Most
I wouldn't say you are weird. Your words, not mine.
Simply, for several reasons, Mexican typography is
strongly influenced by the US one and this is something
spanish has to (and will) take into account somehow.
> Southern American users follow Spanish lead.
Actually, Argentina is one of the leading countries in
style and proofreading. One of the best schools (Litterae)
is in Buenos Aires. On the other hand, one of the best
typographers, Jorge de Buen, is Mexican. His _Manual de
diseño editorial_ is a basic reference (for example, Jacques
André said on it: "Difficile à trouver et en espagnol. Je le
cite car c'est typiquement le genre de très bon livre qui
manque en français...").
> users. I don't know; perhaps forking really is the simplest solution...
Ok. I think isolating Mexico from the rest of the Spanish-speaking
is not a good idea (I'm thinking in the Mexican user), but of course
you are free to do what you think is better. On the other hand,
I'll continue with my plans to provide support for Mexico, as I
think a Panhispanic style considering all variants is a better
idea.
> P.S. Should we continue this thread in Spanish in
> es.comp.lenguajes.tex? Or maybe in es-tex on rediris?
es-tex on rediris, please.
Javier
-----------------------------
http://www.texytipografia.com
Luis Rivera
Javier Bezos wrote:
>
> Simply, for several reasons, Mexican typography is
> strongly influenced by the US one and this is something
> spanish has to (and will) take into account somehow.
>
You got it...
>
> Ok. I think isolating Mexico from the rest of the Spanish-speaking
> is not a good idea [...] On the other hand,
> I'll continue with my plans to provide support for Mexico, as I
> think a Panhispanic style considering all variants is a better
> idea.
>
In a sense, we're already isolated, for the very reasons you mentioned.
In fact, I based my ldf on galician, which is, by somewhat similar
reasons, isolated from spanish too (here the influence is portuguese,
if I'm not mistaken). I'd rather split here and now, before you put too
much effort into something that may not be much worth the pains.
(Supporting an exception might be infinitely painful, especially if
that implies *undoing* many of the changes provided by your macros.)
> > P.S. Should we continue this thread in Spanish in
> > es.comp.lenguajes.tex? Or maybe in es-tex on rediris?
>
> es-tex on rediris, please.
>
See you there...
Luis.