Re: spanish/portuguese translations and texinfo tools

Hi Mario,

> It would be great if there were a global variable in Maxima, say 'language',
> such that assigned one of the values 'en' (default), 'es', 'pt', 'kl', ...
> function 'describe' would return the help information in the selected
> language.

Yes, I agree, although I think maybe the global variable should be a Lisp
variable which is assigned when Maxima starts up.
Maybe *LANGUAGE-CODE* is a suitable name.
It could be assigned according to a command line flag, say --lang=$FOO
where $FOO is en, es, pt, kl, ....

The language flag can select the appropriate text for describe 
and, I hope, also for error messages -- I believe we can use some
version of GNU gettext to translate messages.

I spent some time considering whether it is possible to translate 
function and variable names as well, but I concluded that is not feasible.
If someone can prove me wrong I would be very happy.

By the way, are you volunteering for the kl translation ?!

all the best,
Robert