[tex-live] Install TeX Live 20130914 failed

[Robin Fairbairns]

Zdenek Wagner <zdenek.wagner at gmail.com> wrote:

> 2013/9/17 Arthur Reutenauer <arthur.reutenauer at normalesup.org>:
> >>                                  my question is about the
> >> lower-level support which comes bundled with XeTeX in
> >> TeX Live and which includes support for (e.g.,) Greek,
> >> Ancient Greek and Latin, but not for Hebrew, despite
> >> all collections/schemes/etc. being specified at install
> >> time.
> >
> >   What lower-level support are you talking about?  What more do you
> > expect there to be than hyphenation patterns, that don't exist for
> > Hebrew, as we ascertained?
>
> If I remember TeXbook well, if the hyphenation patterns are
> unavailable, the proper low level command would by \language=-1

my copy of the tex book (bought 1995, so "modern" tex, post v3.0) says
nothing about hyphenation patterns being unavailable; it does say that
unless 0<=language<256, the patterns for language 0 are used.  (in my
case, this is american english.)

babel hebrew looks for hyphenation patterns for hebrew, and (having not
found them) leaves language=0.  in short, babel hebrew expects to be run
on a system that has hebrew patterns; since none exist, it seems pretty
pointless...

sigh