General ⇒ babel error: unknown option 'spanish' for package 'babel'

[thedoctor818]

Currently it resides in Documents. Here are the first few lines. I hope this is enough info for you all:


%%
%% This is file `babel.sty', generated on <1993/5/18>
%% with the docstrip utility (2.0r).
%%
%% The original source file was `babel.doc'.
%%
%%
%% IMPORTANT NOTICE:
%% You are not allowed to distribute this file.
%% For distribution of the original source see
%% the copyright notice in the file babel.doc.
%%
\def\filename{babel.doc}
\let\thisfilename\filename
\def\fileversion{babel-3.0c}
\def\filedate{15 july 1991}
\def\docdate{6 juni 1991}

[frabjous]

Yeah, that looks really old, and not at all how mine looks, which looks like this:

Mine begins like this:

Code: Select all

%%
%% This is file `babel.sty',
%% generated with the docstrip utility.
%%
%% The original source files were:
%%
%% babel.dtx  (with options: `package')
%% This is a generated file.
%% 
%% Copyright 1989-2008 Johannes L. Braams and any individual authors
%% listed elsewhere in this file.  All rights reserved.
%% 
%% This file was generated from file(s) of the Babel system.
%% ---------------------------------------------------------
%% 
%% It may be distributed and/or modified under the
%% conditions of the LaTeX Project Public License, either version 1.3
%% of this license or (at your option) any later version.
%% The latest version of this license is in
%%   http://www.latex-project.org/lppl.txt
%% and version 1.3 or later is part of all distributions of LaTeX
%% version 2003/12/01 or later.
%% 
%% This work has the LPPL maintenance status "maintained".
%% 
%% The Current Maintainer of this work is Johannes Braams.
%% 
%% This file may only be distributed together with a copy of the Babel
%% system. You may however distribute the Babel system without
%% such generated files.
%% 
%% The list of all files belonging to the Babel distribution is
%% given in the file `manifest.bbl'. See also `legal.bbl for additional
%% information.
%% 
%% The list of derived (unpacked) files belonging to the distribution
%% and covered by LPPL is defined by the unpacking scripts (with
%% extension .ins) which are part of the distribution.
%%
\NeedsTeXFormat{LaTeX2e}[2005/12/01]
%% File 'babel.dtx'
%%\ProvidesFile{babel.dtx}[2008/03/16 v3.8l The Babel package
]

Why do you have babel.sty in ~/Documents? Shouldn't you be using the version that came with your LaTeX distribution?

Mine (installed from the TeXlive package for Ubuntu lucid) is located at:

/var/lib/texmf/tex/generic/babel/babel.sty

Do you have it there too? Does it begin like mine or yours?

In any case, I'd remove the old babel.sty from ~/Documents and try to get it to use the one that came with the texlive packages.

In a shell try:

locate /babel.sty

to see if the file is installed multiple places. For me, it gives:

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/usr/share/texmf-texlive/tex/generic/babel/babel.sty
/var/lib/texmf/tex/generic/babel/babel.sty

But they appear to be identical.

[thedoctor818]

This is what I get:

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/home/thedoctor/Documents/babel.sty
/usr/local/texlive/2009/texmf-dist/tex/generic/babel/babel.sty
/usr/share/texmf-texlive/tex/generic/babel/babel.sty
/var/lib/texmf/tex/generic/babel/babel.sty

[thedoctor818]

I tried to delete the babel.sty from Documents, but after doing so & re-running:

Code: Select all

locate /babel.sty

I still got the same message from the terminal.

[gmedina]

Looks like you have two different LaTeX systems in your system; TeX Live2009 that you manually installed and a LaTeX system that you installed using the repositories of your Linux distribution. I would suggest you to uninstall all of them and then make a fresh installation of TeX Live2009.

[thedoctor818]

Could you please tell me how to do that ( remove ALL my tex files & the distro)???

[frabjous]

I wouldn't resort to that quite yet.

There's gotta be some way to delete that file from ~/Documents. Did you empty your "trash"?

Try

mv ~/babel.sty ~/old-babel.sty

from a terminal.

Also, try moving the test .tex file out of ~/Documents and compiling it when it's a different directory than babel.sty.

If it comes to it...

I would think

sudo apt-get purge *texlive*

would delete all the texlive packages installed from Ubuntu's package manager.

And:

sudo tlmgr uninstall --force

would uninstall the texlive installed another way.

But again, I'm not sure that'll be necessary. The problem doesn't seem to be your texlive distribution, but that the file is picking up the babel from ~/Documents, which wouldn't even be removed by this process.

[thedoctor818]

Now, I have uninstalled & reinstalled texlive & am getting the following error: Error: could not start the command: latex -interaction=nonstopmode %.tex

Please any help would be appreciated.

[frabjous]

Sounds like it is not installed.

Try:

latex -v

from a terminal, and post what result it gives here.

[thedoctor818]

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The program 'latex' is currently not installed.  You can install it by typing:
sudo apt-get install texlive-latex-base