[XeTeX] polyglossia, Spanish and indentfirst

[Pablo Rodríguez]

On 06/06/2010 02:42 PM, enrico.gregorio at univr.it wrote:
>> On 06/06/2010 12:03 AM, enrico.gregorio at univr.it wrote:
>>>> [...]
>>>> I'm on TL2009 and the indentfirst package doesn't work at all.
>>>> How can I get indentation on first paragraphs in Spanish?
>>> [...]
>> Your sample works fine, but I'm afraid I can't provide a sample that
>> shows the problem, since the issue appears in book that I typeset with
>> XeLaTeX and babel and I switched now to polyglossia and I don't know why
>> this happens.
>
> Are you using different languages? If so, this may be the problem.

No, Spanish was the main language in both documents, I don't see how 
this might be the problem.

>> After comparing the gloss-spanish.ldf with gloss-french.ldf and
>> gloss-greek.ldf, a workaround for this would be:
>>
>> \makeatletter
>> \def\blockextras at spanish{\frenchspacing\french at indent}
>> \makeatother
>>
>> BTW, François, if you were so kind, I think this should be the default
>> for Spanish as it is for French or Greek. Babel has also indentfirst as
>> default for Spanish as main language.
>
> AFAIK, Spanish babel has an option system that can enable also the
> "noindentfirst" behavior, which is logically better, but typographic rules
> often don't follow logic. :)

Indenting first paragraphs is more a conventional practice than a 
logical rule.

The default rule in Spanish is indenting first paragraphs (probably 
influenced from France, such as it happens in Greece) and I guess that 
this should be the default value in polyglossia (as a general matter).

Because of that I think that polyglossia should reflect the same values 
as the ones from babel for Spanish.

> If you say in your document
>
> \makeatletter
> \gappto\blockextras at spanish{\french at indent}
> \gappto\noextras at spanish{\nofrench at indent}
> \makeatother
>
> all should go as requested. If you need "globally" the "indentfirst" behavior,
> which is reasonable, the indentfirst package should be loaded before polyglossia.
> Indeed, indentfirst.sty says

Thanks for your explanation. Now I get it.

What happened was the following: babel was charged before indentfirst, 
but it made no difference, since babel default for Spanish is 
indentfirst. When I replaced babel for polyglossia, indentfirst being 
loaded latter, first paragraphs weren't indented.

Thanks again for your help,


Pablo