Re: spanish/portuguese translations and texinfo tools

Robert Dodier writes:
> 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.

Well, I think that the right way is to select language for describe
and messages (nice idea) according to user locale not by
command line parameter.  This is standard in UNIX (POSIX) world
(http://www.math.utexas.edu/pipermail/maxima/2005/009216.html).
The only trouble is - Windows.  But for Windows we can make
some helper program which sets LANG environment variable before
invoking Maxima.

> 
> 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.
> 

Do you mean Maxima's built-in functions - expand, ratsimp etc.
No way!!!

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

;-)


-- 
      Vadim V. Zhytnikov