General ⇒ Unknown command

[patrikb]

Hi, First of all I'm totally new to latex so my knowledge is very limited.

I use the editor TexmakerX and have the Miktex distribution which both should be the latest versions.

The problem is when I want to use the this setup of commands (simplified):

\usepackage[danish,english]{babel}
%and then later after \begin{document} I use
\selectlanguage{danish}
%and it is the selectlanguage command which is unknown which is confusing since I have seen it being used several times in introductions to latex

I have also tried using a preamble which should work:

\documentclass[a4paper,10pt]{article}

\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}
\usepackage[danish,english]{babel}
\usepackage{graphicx}
\usepackage{amsmath, amssymb}
\usepackage{url}
%giver mulighed for at henvise til en hjemmeside med f.eks. \url{www.psi.nbi.dk}

\begin{document}
\selectlanguage{danish}
%Udkommenter (tilføj et %-tegn i starten af linien) ovenstående, hvis du skriver på engelsk.

Hello world!

\end{document}

But an explanation on what this command does would be nice too. My first guess would be it changes the dictionary used or? Because I can write danish only symbols without a problem.(also have a dictionary problem but I guess that is editor related and should be in that forum)

Have a screenshot also.
http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/14 ... known.jpg/

EDIT: solved dictionary problem I also had

[frabjous]

Are you having problems compiling the document, or are you just getting this tooltip?

Compiling this document:

Code: Select all

\listfiles
\documentclass[a4paper,10pt]{article}

\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}
\usepackage[danish,english]{babel}
\usepackage{graphicx}
\usepackage{amsmath, amssymb}
\usepackage{url}

\begin{document}
\selectlanguage{danish}

Hello world!

\end{document}

does not generate any errors for me. Does it for you? If so, can you post the .log file that is generated when you try, here?

I'm not that familiar with TeXmakerX, but are you sure that tooltip isn't just a harmless one having to do with syntax highlighting: \selectlanguage is a command, but not a specially recognized one that gets treated in an unusual way?

[patrikb]

I have no problems compiling and getting a pdf file and there are no errors. And I'm also new to LaTeX so I don't know how TexMakerX would treat the command.

[frabjous]

The commands are processed by LaTeX, not TeXmakerX. Apart from determining syntax highlighting (the coloring you see for different kinds of commands and their arguments), TeXmakerX itself doesn't have to process any commands.

[patrikb]

ok, then the only thing I would like to know now is if there is a definition of what the \selectlanguage{} command does since I can't find/figure out, but otherwise thx for help.

[frabjous]

The command is from the babel package (see its documentation for more info) -- but the most important thing it does is change the rules for hyphenating words at the ends of lines to match the patterns for one language as opposed to another. It is really only necessary for documents written in more than one language; otherwise, you'd just specify the desired language as the option to the babel package when you load it. (Notice that you load two languages there, so it's necessary to select one of them below; though I think if you leave this out, it's whatever is listed last that is otherwise used.)

[patrikb]

thank you. That clarified a lot.

[localghost]

[…] That clarified a lot.

If that solves the problem, then please mark the topic (not the last post) accordingly as written in the Board Rules (to be read before posting).


Best regards and welcome to the board
Thorsten