Re: I'd like to be a contributor!

[David Bateman]

JP Ferraro wrote:
>  I'd like to translate the "575 page manual" from english to portuguese
> | (Brazil). If you accept my contribution, i'd like to know how could 
> i get
> | the text to begin the translation work.
> ** 
> *When i sent him this e-mail, John W. Eaton  (address@hidden 
> <mailto:address@hidden>) said to let you know about my wish:*
>  
> I suggest you let people on the address@hidden 
> <mailto:address@hidden> list know about
> your plans.
>
> It would also be good for us to develop a way handle translations of
> the doc strings in Octave.  Since much of the manual is made up of
> these doc strings that are embedded in the sources, it would be good
> to edit translations of them if/when they change.  That might also be
> a good discussion for the maintainers list.
>  
> jwe"
>  
> --
> João Paulo Ferraro T. de Araujo
This problem breaks down into two issues.

1) translating the help strings of the functions themselves, and
2) translating the rest of the manual.

The manual reuses the help strings, and having a system to handle 
translated help strings would allow you to do something like "ajuda 
eig"... Octave-forge has the framework to allow this to be done, see

http://octave.sourceforge.net/translation.html

and there is an octave-forge package

http://octave.sourceforge.net/pt_BR/index.html

already for Brazilian Portuguese from  Jorge Barros de Abreu. The 
problem with this is keeping the english and translated strings in 
agreement, and system in the octave-forge package allows this... In any 
case I'd suggest you install and load the pt_BR package and play with 
the translated help strings..

However, that doesn't address the manual itself. Ideally we should 
translate first all of the help strings of the functions in the manner 
above and then the *.txi files in Octave and so allow the creation of 
the translated manual with the same mechanism as the English manual 
itself...

Regards
David

--
David Bateman                                address@hidden
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