revision & translation of errors and other messages

Am Samstag, den 07.02.2009, 15:52 -0700 schrieb Robert Dodier:
> Hello,
> 
> I'd like to arrange for Maxima to translate error messages and
> other messages via gettext (a message translation system).
> If I understand correctly there is typically a .po file for each
> language which lists the translated strings and their translations.
> These are compile into a .mo file and loaded at run time.
> The function gettext fetches a translation, if there is one,
> from a hash table. Many free software projects use this system.
> 
> I found a CL implementation of gettext:
> http://users.actrix.co.nz/mycroft/intl.lisp
> I got permission from the author to license it by GPLv2.
> (There is a gettext implementation in Clisp but it is written
> in C. I couldn't find any others in Lisp.)
> 
> If there isn't too much opposition I'd like to arrange for
> MERROR and MTELL to run their arguments through gettext.
> The gettext code is pretty straightforward but I'll need some
> help about putting .po/.mo files in the right place. Also of course
> we'll need to find someone to make each .po file.

Yes, I think too that it would be a nice feature to support other
languages. Please let me know if I can help to build up a German
translation.

> As part of this effort, I am planning to revise the existing
> messages to a uniform format; the messages were written
> by many people according to different conventions, so I
> think it's a good idea to make them all follow the same
> convention before translating them.

This might be the real challenge to find some conventions. But it would
be helpful for the user too to get similar messages for similar
problems. 

Dieter Kaiser