[XeTeX] polyglossia becoming reality...

[Yves Codet]

Hello.

I probably misunderstood how "polyglossia" should be used. If I  
typeset the following test file

%%%%%
\documentclass[a4paper,12pt]{article}
\usepackage{fontspec}
\usepackage{polyglossia}
\background{french}
\load{greek}
\setmainfont{Charis SIL}
\newfontfamily\greekfont{Lucida Grande}

\begin{document}

\begin{greek}
\greekfont Μῆνιν ἄειδε, θεά...
\end{greek}

Chante, Muse, la colère...

\end{document}
%%%%%

I get these errors:

! Undefined control sequence.
\french at punctuation ...kenstate =1\XeTeXcharclass
                                                   `\! 7 
\XeTeXcharclass `\? 7...
l.9 \begin{document}

? (./essai.aux)
! Undefined control sequence.
\french at punctuation ... \XeTeXinterchartokenstate
                                                   =1\XeTeXcharclass ` 
\! 7\Xe...
l.9 \begin{document}

I have an unmodified installation of TeX Live 2007 on Mac OS X 10.4.

> I insist that the current version is "pre-alpha" quality... I would be
> very happy if many readers of this list could experiment with it and
> make suggestions. My own TODO list is already pretty long. For  
> example I
> don't really like the current language setup mechanism with  
> \background
> and \load ... so advices converning the user interface are welcome.

You could perhaps use \mainlanguage and \secondarylanguage.

Another thing I’m not sure I understood. If I say \begin{greek} is  
the font defined by \newfontfamily\greekfont{...} used or must I add  
\greekfont? It would be handy to have a mechanism allowing to select  
a certain font and certain hyphenation patterns at the same time.

I suppose some other users would need to be able to select ancient  
Greek and Sanskrit hyphenation patterns, together with a  
corresponding font. This is for your TODO list :)

Best wishes,

Yves