Babel changed language settings for German

[hseliger]

Since v. 2.99 of babel-german, the selection options have changed. ngerman is still available, however obsolete. The new correct setting would be german-de or german-germany (or -at or -ch). Yet xsim does not seem to understand the new settings.

So not overely urgent, but should be fixed going forward.

I currently "fix" it for myself using \xsimsetup{language = ngerman}, and although I have been using TeX for about 40 years, I can't easily decypher latex3-syntax. I guess my brain is still stuck in c++ era…

So: unfortunately I can't provide a pull request as I can't figure out how xsim pulls the current language from babel. Maybe someone else can?

– Hendrik

[muzimuzhi]

Probably related only to translations (https://github.com/cgnieder/translations), one of the xsim dependencies.

I'm not a regular babel user, so could you provide a concrete example which failed?

[hseliger]

Could well be in translations. Here is a minimal example. Using german for babel works and since babel 3.0 defaults to new orthography and Germany, but our friends in Austria and Switzerland are out of luck. Using any of german-deor grman-at or german-ch gets an error message from xsim and then defaults to English for headers.
Here the error:

\openout3 = foo.xsim
Package translations Info: no dictionary file `translations-basic-dictionary-.t
rsl' found. on input line 6.
\g__cctab_next_cctab=\catcodetable17

And a minimal example:

\documentclass{scrartcl}
%\usepackage[german]{babel}% This works
%\usepackage[german-de]{babel}% This does not->English headings!
%\usepackage[german-ch]{babel}% This does not->English headings!
\usepackage[german-at]{babel}% This does not->English headings!
\usepackage{xsim}
\begin{document}
\begin{exercise}
Was?
\end{exercise}
\begin{solution}
Dieses!
\end{solution}
\end{document}

[muzimuzhi]

Declaring new translations language aliases seems to fix the gap. For example, \DeclareLanguageAlias{german-at}{german} adds support for \usepackage[german-at]{babel}.

\documentclass{scrartcl}
%\usepackage[german]{babel}% This works
%\usepackage[german-de]{babel}% This does not->English headings!
%\usepackage[german-ch]{babel}% This does not->English headings!
\usepackage[german-at]{babel}% This does not->English headings!
\usepackage{xsim}
\DeclareLanguageAlias{german-at}{german}
\begin{document}
\begin{exercise}
Was?
\end{exercise}
\begin{solution}
Dieses!
\end{solution}
\end{document}

PDF output:

I've also reported this to translations, see

• Support new german languages added since babel-german v2.99 translations#31.