revision & translation of errors and other messages

Robert Dodier <robert.dodier <at> gmail.com> writes:

> 
> 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.

Great idea. Thanks. Our students are sometimes very weak in English and 
the translation makes the barrier to use Maxima in classrooms smaller.

I think that you know that gettext (and friends) not only 
translates strings, but can be used to scan sources for strings to be 
translated and optionaly merge them with older translations. Hence all 
messages like "This is maxima message" should be rewritten into something 
like gettext("This is maxima message") to make scanning with xgettext and
perhaps merging new and old strings using msgmerge possible. And in this 
case it should be not necessary to modify MERROR and MTELL 
(I think, but I have no experinece 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.
> 


I can help with Czech translation. It is allmost the same as Slovak, but the 
target amount of users will be still small due to the 
current size of these nations :-)

However, the Czech Maxima session could look like 

integrate(1/(x^2+a),x);
Je v?raz a kladn? nebo z?porn??

which means
in TeX: Je v\'{y}raz a kladn\'{y} nebo z\'{a}porn\'{y}?
in English: Is a positive otr negative?

How to answer this question? "z?p;" or "neg;" ? Is it a good idea to allow 
translated anwers on input? If not, is it a good idea to expect answer 
in English, if the question is in other language? 
I think that German and other translations could have similar problems.

Best regards
Robert Marik