Re: [Caml-list] error messages in multiple languages ?

[Xavier Leroy <Xavier.Leroy@inria.fr>]

On 04/08/2017 04:22 PM, Tao Stein wrote:

> I've been teaching OCaml to university students in Beijing. I believe they'd
> feel more comfortable if the error messages were in Chinese. Has anyone
> thought of implementing multi-language strings in the compiler? So, say with
> the setting of an environment variable, the compiler user could receive
> errors and warnings in their preferred language.

Caml Light, the ancestor of OCaml, was internationalized in this manner.  It
had messages in English, French, German, Spanish and Italian.  Curious or
nostalgic minds can have a look at the text file containing the translations:

https://github.com/camllight/camllight/blob/master/sources/src/camlmsgs.txt

and at the i18n engine itself, which was just a wrapper around "printf" that
used the english format message as an index into the translations:

https://github.com/camllight/camllight/blob/master/sources/src/compiler/interntl.ml

This implementation was pretty short and sweet, if I may say so myself, and
possibly easier to use than gettext because by construction the english
message was always available, even if translations were missing by mistake.

Yet it was a lot of work, and quite painful, to keep the message file and
the translations up to date.  Keep in mind that Caml Light had perhaps
1/10th as many messages as OCaml does.  So, the chances of getting i18n to
work for OCaml look thin.  One advantage for me, though, is that it would
make it harder to add new warnings :-)

Your Caml historian,

- Xavier Leroy