Re: [Caml-list] OCaml messages in French / messages d'OCaml en français

[Gabriel Scherer <gabriel.scherer@gmail.com>]

> I have some questions :
> - Is it the right place to talk about that?

Yes, definitely. I have more reserves about encouraging people to
participate to the discussion in French: given that a notable
proportion of the people subscribed to the list don't understand
french, I'm not sure it's nice to send them unwanted french messages
or take them out of the discussion.

(There are other non-english-speaking communities using OCaml, for
example in Russia and Japan, and they apparently haven't felt the need
to communicate through the caml-list in their native language.)

> - Am I duplicating some previous translating work?

I'm not aware of any, but the Caml Light error messages used to be
localized, so there are french translations available for Caml Light.
I heard that there is some work ongoing to evaluate the feasability of
using OCaml in the French junior high school, those people may be
interested in such a translation (or have done one, but I don't know).
You should definitely share your patch in case someone is interested.

> - Is there some license issues about spreading such a patch?

OCaml's free software license requests that you make it clear what's
your code and what's the original work by distributing your changes as
a separate patch (instead of distributing the complete code of the
modifier compiler in only one step). Distributing only a patch is
fine. It is also generally accepted that pointing to a
source-versioning repository (a SVN or git repo for example) is
correct, as the commit history makes it clear what your modification
is.

> - May I post an alpha version here, as an attachment, so as to get members' feedback?

Of course, but it may be simpler and lighter to host this patch
somewhere and refer list members to it. It would also make it easier
for you in the future to point other people to this same patch.


On a strictly personal level, I'm not terribly interested in such a
feature: I have only interacted with OCaml beginners that, if maybe
not completely comfortable with English, accepted to read technical
english as part of their programming activity. If such a localization
feature was available I'm not sure I would encourage people to use it
-- if only because a single format for error message makes it easier
to ask for help and search the web about it. That doesn't mean, of
course, that I think nobody would care: I'm quite confident some
people would have a use of localized error messages.
I would be interested in more information on the profile of your
students, that made such a change an important part of the teaching
process.

On Wed, Nov 14, 2012 at 11:30 PM, Alexis Irlande <nexinexi@msn.com> wrote:
>
>
> Hello everybody,
>
> I am new on the list. I have been teaching (O)Caml for 14 years, in France and South America.
>
> I wasn't able to find a way to easily customize OCaml interpreter spoken language, the way Caml-light did,
> so I decided to make a source patch, mainly designed for my classroom computers, in order to translate
> OCaml interpreter messages (errors, warnings, tracing, interruptions, and so on) in French.
>
> It now works quite well, so I was wondering if someone could be interested by that tool...
>
>
> I have some questions :
> - Is it the right place to talk about that?
> - Am I duplicating some previous translating work?
> - Is there some license issues about spreading such a patch?
> - May I post an alpha version here, as an attachment, so as to get members' feedback?
>
> Given the subject matter, you can go on with the discussion in French, of course.
>
> Thanks for your attention.
>
>
> Alexis Irlande
>
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