[XeTeX] Status of babel and polyglossia in xelatex

[Vladimir Lomov]

Hi.

I play with xelatex for some time but don't understand status of
polyglossia and babel in xelatex.

For example, in (pdf)latex document I use preamble
<code>
\documentclass{article}

\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}
\usepackage[russian]{babel}
</code>

so I could type russian texts in document and have suitable names for
chapters (Chapter -> Глава), tables and etc.

In xelatex document I use preamble
<code>
\documentclass{article}

\usepackage[russian]{polyglossia}
\usepackage{xltxtra}

\setmainfont{Times New Roman}
</code>

and I could type russian texts in document too.

As I understand, polyglossia is a replacement for babel (babel in latex,
polyglossia in xelatex) so I should not use babel with xelatex.

If this is correct then why when I run xelatex on this minimal document
<code>
\documentclass{minimal}

\begin{document}
Minimal.
\end{document}
</code>
I see:
<output>
This is XeTeX, Version 3.1415926-2.2-0.9995.2 (TeX Live 2009)
entering extended mode
(./test2.tex
LaTeX2e <2009/09/24>
Babel <v3.8l> and hyphenation patterns for english, usenglishmax, dumylang, noh
yphenation, german-x-2009-06-19, ngerman-x-2009-06-19, ancientgreek, ibycus, ar
abic, basque, bulgarian, catalan, pinyin, coptic, croatian, czech, danish, dutc
h, esperanto, estonian, farsi, finnish, french, galician, german, ngerman, mono
greek, greek, hungarian, icelandic, indonesian, interlingua, irish, italian, ku
rmanji, latin, latvian, lithuanian, mongolian, mongolian2a, bokmal, nynorsk, po
lish, portuguese, romanian, russian, sanskrit, serbian, slovak, slovenian, span
ish, swedish, turkish, ukenglish, ukrainian, uppersorbian, welsh, loaded.
(/usr/local/opt/texlive/texmf-dist/tex/latex/base/minimal.cls
Document Class: minimal 2001/05/25 Standard LaTeX minimal class
) (./test2.aux) [1] (./test2.aux) )
Output written on test2.pdf (1 page).
Transcript written on test2.log.
</output>

According to fmtutil.cfg:

$ grep "xelatex" $(kpsewhich fmtutil.cnf)
xelatex xetex language.dat -etex xelatex.ini
$ grep "pdflatex" $(kpsewhich fmtutil.cnf)
pdflatex pdftex language.dat -translate-file=cp227.tcx *pdflatex.ini

so pdflatex and xelatex use the same language.dat file.

This is rather strange for me: if xelatex don't use babel why it has
babel banner?

P.S. I use TeX Live 2009 (see output) and update it for time to time.

-- 
<Intention> "It's classic percolate-up economics, recognizing that money
            is like manure: It works best if you spread it around."
<Knghtbrd> Intention: Carter's correlation: People with lots of either
           usually smell funny
<Intention> Knghtbrd: You SO win.