Re: [patch] Fixes and improvements in org-latex-language-alist (was: ox-latex language handling in Org-9.5 vs 9.6)

[Max Nikulin <manikulin@gmail.com>]

On 10/09/2023 23:52, Ihor Radchenko wrote:
> Max Nikulin writes:
> 
>> On 09/09/2023 16:11, Ihor Radchenko wrote:
>>> I am not sure if making a breaking change to public constant is the best
>>> approach.
>>> What about simply adding an extra entry:
>>> ("de" ....)
>>> ("de-de" <copy of "de" property list>)
>>
>> Ideally it should not be a public constant. Values should be accessed
>> using a helper that returns "de" value for "de-de", "de-ch", "de-it"
>> without copies, unless a more specific key is defined as it is done for
>> de-at.
> 
> It is already a public constant. And I see no strong reason to change
> this (strong enough to justify breaking change).

Every piece of code accessing this public constant must implement 
fallback from e.g. "de-ch" (or de_CH) to "de". Or to "en" for an 
unsupported language. To achieve consistent behavior it is better to 
provide a helper function.

>> I have a hope that properties may be generated from CLDR data, LaTeX
>> babel .ini files, etc. However it should be possible to override
>> specific properties.
> 
> For context, I plan to provide a global language-identifier alist that
> will link human-readable language names to abbreviations like "de",
> "de-de", etc.

This languange-region identifiers may be written in different way 
(dash/underscore, case), but they are used specify POSIX locale LANG, 
LC_* and extensions like LANGUAGE, so in some cases human friendly names 
may be less convenient.

> Thus, auto-generating the alist may be not reliable. At least some
> manual overseeing may be needed.

Of course, some overrides may be necessary. E.g. it was decided to use 
French inner quotes different from CLDR.

> Though I am not sure if we can easily handle tricky
> cases like weird installation directory for TeXLive or MikTeX.

kpsewhich babel-de.ini
/usr/share/texlive/texmf-dist/tex/generic/babel/locale/de/babel-de.ini