Taco wrote

Hans Hagen wrote:

...

Thomas A. Schmitz wrote:

...

When I regenerate the formats on my linux box with the latest release, I get this error:

language : patterns pl for pl loaded (n=13,e=pl0,m=pl0) (/usr/share/texmf/tex/generic/hyphen/plhyph.tex !Improper alphabetic constant. <to be read again> \else \utffouruniglph ...tf@c *(#1-\utf@f )+\utf@b *(`#2 -\utf@g )+\utf@a *(`#3-\ut... l.189 ./sr/o 2d5

Since nobody else complains, I guess this must be a misconfiguration on my side, but what could it be?

Loading the wrong pattern file, most likely. This plhyph.tex is not one of Hans' files, it should have found lang-pl.pat instead. Perhaps you have a file called 'aliases' somewhere that remaps lang-pl.pat to the tetex-supplied plhyph.tex. Otherwise, something is wrong with the search paths.

Cheers, taco

Bingo, that was it. This is on Suse 10.1. by default, it ships with a cont-usr.tex in /etc/texmf/tex/context/config/ which takes precedence over everything else. And this file contains a couple of synonyms which seem pretty stale: %D Hyphenation patterns are normally sought in filed named %D \type {lang-xx.pat}. When present on the system, those %D patterns take precedence. (The next list is inspired on %D Thomas Esser's \TETEX\ distribution.) This list will be %D adapted to the actual situation. \definefilesynonym [lang-ca.pat] [cahyph.tex] \definefilesynonym [lang-da.pat] [dkhyph.tex] \definefilesynonym [lang-de.pat] [dehyphn.tex] \definefilesynonym [lang-es.pat] [eshyph.tex] \definefilesynonym [lang-fi.pat] [fihyph.tex] \definefilesynonym [lang-fr.pat] [frhyph.tex] \definefilesynonym [lang-hr.pat] [hrhyph.tex] \definefilesynonym [lang-hu.pat] [huhyph.tex] \definefilesynonym [lang-it.pat] [ithyph.tex] \definefilesynonym [lang-la.pat] [lahyph7.tex] \definefilesynonym [lang-no.pat] [nohyph.tex] \definefilesynonym [lang-pl.pat] [plhyph.tex] \definefilesynonym [lang-pt.pat] [pthyph.tex] \definefilesynonym [lang-ro.pat] [rohyph.tex] \definefilesynonym [lang-ru.pat] [ruenhyph.tex] % sic: ruen \definefilesynonym [lang-sl.pat] [sihyph.tex] % sic: sl/si \definefilesynonym [lang-sv.pat] [svhyph.tex] % was [sehyph.tex] \definefilesynonym [lang-tr.pat] [tkhyph.tex] % was [trhyph.tex] \definefilesynonym [lang-ua.pat] [ukrenhyp.tex] % sic ukren \definefilesynonym [lang-uk.pat] [ukhyph.tex] \definefilesynonym [lang-nl.pat] [nlhyphen.tex] % symbolic name, see below \definefilesynonym [lang-af.pat] [nlhyphen.tex] % symbolic name, see below \definefilesynonym [lang-en.pat] [ushyphen.tex] % symbolic name, see below \definefilesynonym [lang-us.pat] [ushyphen.tex] % symbolic name, see below %definefilesynonym [czhyph.pat] [czhyphen.tex] % safeguard %definefilesynonym [skhyph.pat] [skhyphen.tex] % safeguard \definefilesynonym [lang-cz.pat] [czhyphen.tex] % in a different part of the tree, sigh \definefilesynonym [lang-sk.pat] [skhyphen.tex] % in a different part of the tree, sigh %definefilesynonym [lang-cz.hyp] [czhyphen.ex] % in a different part of the tree, sigh %definefilesynonym [lang-sk.hyp] [skhyphen.ex] % in a different part of the tree, sigh \definefilesynonym [lang-deo.pat] [dehypht.tex] % old german patterns I removed this file, and format generation proceeded normally. But I guess that at every Suse update, it will be regenerated... Best Thomas