! Package babel Error: Unknown option 'catalan'.

[xavivars]

I'm using pandoc's extra image to build a PDF out of a markdown file, with lang: ca in the frontmatter.

Up until last week, it was building without any problem, but starting a few days ago I started getting this error

$ pandoc --from markdown+fancy_lists --to pdf --template eisvogel input.md -o output.pdf

Error producing PDF.
! Package babel Error: Unknown option 'catalan'.
(babel)                Suggested actions:
(babel)                * Make sure you haven’t misspelled it
(babel)                * Check in the babel manual that it's supported
(babel)                * If supported and it's a language, you may
(babel)                  need in some distributions a separate
(babel)                  installation
(babel)                * If installed, check there isn’t an old
(babel)                  version of the required files in your system.
See the babel package documentation for explanation.
Type  H <return>  for immediate help.
 ...                                              
                                                  
l.4298 \bbl@tempb

I don't really get why that could be the case, as babel-catalan is not here:

dockerfiles/common/latex/packages.txt

Line 83 in 91fddea

babel-basque

Is there any reason why the Catalan package could have been installed before, but its' no longer there?

Is there any way for me to install it?

[tarleb]

It seems that the install of babel-basque failed silently: https://github.com/pandoc/dockerfiles/actions/runs/19989859711/job/57329087779#step:6:733

We should find out how this can happen, and how to prevent it. I'm going to rebuild the latex and extra images.

[xavivars]

I don't really understand why that could have left babel-catalan not installed, unless there's some weird dependencies somewhere I can't find...

[daamien]

Hi @xavivars !

As a sidenote, the extra variant does not officially support multiple languages. I was not aware that the catalan package was there.... This just "happened to work" and of course we're not going to remove it but in general way we can't officially support multiple languages in the extra image because it take a lot of time and knowledge to maintain. I have worked on support Persian/Farsi and Chinese for another docker image and that's not an easy task.

We've had other request in the past for other languages (russian, etc.) and my advice would be to build a new variant upon the extra image for that.

[xavivars]

Thanks for the follow up, @daamien !

Not asking for any specific support for catalan, beyond installing latex's language pack (in latex image, nothing in extra). Specifically, I was more wondering if babel-catalan could (shoudl?) be added here, as there are plenty of other languages. Happy to do an MR if you would be willing to merge.

What I still don't understand how "it was there" before "and is not there" anymore

[daamien]

Hi @xavivars

By "supporting multiple languages", I meant "maintaining the list of packages and dependencies".

I understand that it may seem as easy as adding a new line in a Dockerfile but I raises many questions, such as

• Which languages do we choose to add ? Do we add all locale variants ?
• How do we test the language packages and unsure that the output are correct ?
• How to find and maintain the proper fonts and encodings, especially for non-latin languages ?

This is definitely doable but that not trivial. Again I did that task for a few years with Farsi and Chinese and my experience is that it takes more time and knowledge that expected at first glance.

To give you a small example : The bidi package is required for right-to-left languages but it generates an error on the eisvogel latex template. I discovered the problem 5 years ago and it is still there because the eisvogel does not have the time to fix it:

Wandmalfarbe/pandoc-latex-template#231

Furthermore when you start adding languages and fonts, the image size will grow fast and the CI minutes will add up. To give you an example, the current pandoc/extra image is 450MB. The image I used to build with all the languages was 1,4 GB

[xavivars]

That's totally fair, no problem with creating an image using yours as base and adding Catalan to it.

That was really not (necessarily) my question. Initially yes, and that's why I opened it as a bug.

But now the question is more: how is it possible that it was working before? I've been using the image for more than a year now, not knowing Catalan wasn't installed, and it was working, with no issues, and it suddenly started failing now

[tarleb]

I don't really understand why that could have left babel-catalan not installed, unless there's some weird dependencies somewhere I can't find...

Right, my bad. I should know better than mixing up languages like that.

I'm not sure what's going on, sorry. We didn't change anything, I can't find any obvious build failures, and it doesn't seem like there were changes in the LaTeX packages, either.

My suggestion is therefore to follow the advice here (but obviously leave-out the part about non-Latin scripts): https://fosstodon.org/@pandoc/112392704936739385