UPDATE-LANGUAGE(8)

NAME
update-language - generate /var/lib/texmf/tex/generic/config/language.dat from files in /etc/texmf/language.d/

SYNOPSIS
update-language [option ...]

DESCRIPTION
This manual page documents update-language, a program that was written for the Debian distribution.

  Overview
update-language is used to generate the hyphenation configuration file /var/lib/texmf/tex/generic/config/language.dat which determines which hyphenation patterns will be available in the LaTeX, pdfLaTeX, and some other formats, from the files with names ending in ‘.cnf’ located in /etc/texmf/language.d/.

With the underlying mechanism, system administrators can disable languages they want by commenting their entries in the appropriate files under /etc/texmf/language.d/, or add files defining language names for locally installed patterns. Such changes will be preserved if the package in question is removed (not purged) and then reinstalled.

The TeX packages provide basic hyphenation pattern configuration files in /etc/texmf/language.d/, Thanks to update-language, TeX-related packages that provide additional patterns can have their own language definitions referenced in /var/lib/texmf/tex/generic/config/language.dat without having to edit that file.

The packages simply have to ship their pattern files in the appropriate TDS locations and a ‘.cnf’ file under /etc/texmf/language.d/ (e.g., 10foo.cnf) defining the language names for the pattern files.

  Mode of operation
update-language concatenates all the ‘.cnf’ files under /etc/texmf/language.d/ provided that:
-   they do not contain the following pseudo-comment:

        % -_- DebPkgProvidedMaps -_-

    or;
-   they have this pseudo-comment and are listed in a ‘.list’ file under /var/lib/tex-common/language-cnf, meaning that the package shipping the ‘.cnf’ file is installed. The name of the ‘.list’ file is ignored (but should be the name of the package that installed it). The file should contain the names of the ‘.cnf’ files in /etc/texmf/language.d/ that should be enabled, without the ‘.cnf’ suffix, e.g.

        10foo
        12bar

The first case is for configuration files added by the local system administrator. Files that contain the magic pseudo-comment should be used by Debian packages. In this case, only the base name should appear in the ‘.list’ file: for instance, ‘10foo’ for /etc/texmf/language.d/10foo.cnf; please refer to the Debian TeX Policy for details.

The order used to process the ‘.cnf’ files is obtained by running sort(1) with the ‘C’ locale (for ordinary alphanumeric characters, it corresponds to the ASCII order). The result obtained by concatenating them is stored as the new /var/lib/texmf/tex/generic/config/language.dat

  Options

--quiet
    don't write anything to the standard output during normal operation

--check
    Executes additional checks that all necessary files are present in the kpathsea database. Don't use this in maintainer scripts.

--help
    print a summary of the command-line usage of update-language and exit

--version
    output version information and exit

Note that the -v option, which turns on verbose mode, is deprecated. We are currently in a transition phase where quiet mode is still the default (therefore, --quiet has no effect), but update-language will be verbose by default as soon as enough packages use --quiet in their maintainer scripts.

FILES
    /etc/texmf/language.d/*.cnf
    /var/lib/texmf/tex/generic/config/language.dat
    /var/lib/tex-common/language-cnf/*.list

DIAGNOSTICS
update-language returns 0 on success, or a strictly positive integer on error.

SEE ALSO
The Debian TeX Policy in /usr/share/tex-common/

AUTHORS
This manual page was written by -nosplit Frank Küster <frank@debian.org> based on older texts by Atsuhito Kohda <kohda@debian.org> and Florent Rougon <f.rougon@free.fr> for the Debian distribution (and may be used by others).