[Tex/LaTex] Package babel Error: Unknown option `francais’

babelerrors

I recently updated my operating system from Ubuntu 13.04 to Ubuntu 13.10.

Since then, I am facing difficulties compiling my TeX code in which the french babel package is called. Please note that all my sources were compiling very fine before the system upgrade.

However, now, given the following header:

  \usepackage[francais]{babel}

I receive the following error:

! Package babel Error: Unknown option `francais'. Either you misspelled it

What should I do? Please note that if I remove this part of code (\usepackage[francais]{babel}), everything is compiling well. I also tried it with french, and I receive the same result.

Thank you in advance for your help.


MINIMUM WORKING EXAMPLE :

\documentclass[11pt,a4paper]{article}
\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}
\usepackage[francais]{babel}
\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
\usepackage{amsmath}
\usepackage{amsfonts}
\usepackage{amssymb}

\begin{document}
This is a MINIMUM WORKING EXAMPLE.
\end{document}
! Package babel Error: Unknow option `francais'. Either you misspelled it

Best Answer

The complete error message is:

! Package babel Error: Unknown option `francais'. Either you misspelled it
(babel)                or the language definition file francais.ldf was not found.

Package file babel.sty supports francais since a very long time, thus the second line of the error message applies very likely:

The organization of the babel language files has recently changed. The language files (.ldf, ...) go into separate TeX distribution packages. For example, option francais loads frenchb.ldf:

  • TeX Live puts the latter in the distribution package babel-french. It needs to be installed, if you are using tlmgr, the package manager of TeX Live.

  • In Ubuntu saucy there is a package texlive-lang-french that contains frenchb.ldf (file list). Install it, if you are using TeX Live of Ubuntu.