Seeking Help with Windows Maxima installer localization

The MMa book (English version) addresses the reader as "you"
.. a random opening of the book ... in 2.10.3 (second addition)
e.g. "You can think of >> and << as ...." ... "First, you call OpenWrite 
..."


so Robert's objection [ugh] to the use of "you" in my earlier example is 
presumably a matter of some delicacy.   There is a philosophical notion, 
not worth pursuing, that anthropomorphizing a program is a bad idea 
(e.g. "Factor likes to return unsimplified answers such as 2*3^2".   
Clearly programs do not have desires.  But other wordings take more room 
and are not as clear in some sense.)

There is also the use of "We"  e.g.  in chapter XX we described one way 
of doing ....

I (perhaps mistakenly?) credit Stephen Wolfram with the basic writing 
style of this book, which is, in my opinion, a major strength of the 
program.


RJF


van Nek wrote:

>Am 15 Nov 2006 um 9:01 hat Robert Dodier geschrieben:
>
>  
>
>>On 11/15/06, Richard Fateman <fateman at cs.berkeley.edu> wrote:
>>
>>    
>>
>>>I think that the Mathematica book tends to strike the right tone for
>>>addressing the reader.
>>>      
>>>
>>Yes, it's good. Incidentally, the Mma reference docs describe
>>what functions do, as opposed to what the user can do with them.
>>    
>>
>
>Robert and Richard,
>
>voting for Mma as a guideline is a clear statement. There exists a German translation of the 
>Mma manual. It uses the polite form of 'you', which is 'Sie' and not 'Du'.
> 
>  
>
>>>[Whether this use of you is Tu/Vous  in French, Du/Sie in Spanish or Man/Du
>>>in German, I cannot say for sure. But I think it is probably the polite
>>>form.]
>>>      
>>>
>>Someday Maxima will have a built-in help translator, which
>>chooses a tone appropriate for the reader.
>>E.g. "Esteemed Sir/Madam" (business users) or "Hey, man"
>>(for college students). In Spanish of course we'll have
>>"Vuestra merced" for any royalty who are using Maxima.
>>
>>Clearly we could have a lot of fun with that ... I'll stop now. 8^)
>>    
>>
>
>Now you laugh! But seriously, I have in mind to create such a thing (in a far away future). 
>For an application of Maxima in the education of Mathematics in school (students ages 10-
>20) it is necessary to make a help system available which can react adapted to the students 
>age and level of education. (Just imagine a 10 years old German student who wants to 
>know something about primes, factors and divisors. At the moment he definitely will be lost 
>using the Maxima manual, even if it will be in German.) 
>There is already such a project existing in Berlin, which tries to implement this approach of 
>user profiled help system for education. ... Some kind of Alice for teaching Mathematics. ...
>And this is not so far away from what you stated above;-)
>
>Volker
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>  
>