Foreign Languages

Foreign Languages

[Giuseppe Bilotta (Oblomov)]

Hello,

I recently discovered ConTeXt, and was really susprised by its power
(and size :-)); anyway, before switching to ConTeXt I need to know about a
few features not thoroughtly discussed in the english manual (I also
downloaded the "beta" full version).

The first one is support for multiple languages. That is, I'd like to know
if ConTeXt has anything similar to babel, and, if not, how can similar
results be achieved.

The second one is support for bibliography: can BibTeX be used with ConTeXt?

The third one is about math. I do lots of mathematics, and I found AMS LaTeX
very powerfull for my needs. From what I got reading the manual, I can
surely have features like \newtheorem and alike in ConTeXt, with no problem
(and maybe even with more power on customization); but, I haven't found
anything about mathematics; can I use AMSTeX on ConTeXt?

One last thing: I'd like to support/contribute to ConTeXt, helping in
developing an italian interface and possibly translating the ConTeXt manual
(when it will be complete). What can/should I do?

--
Giuseppe Bilotta

Re: Foreign Languages

[Hans Hagen]

At 09:13 PM 9/11/00 +0200, you wrote:

>The first one is support for multiple languages. That is, I'd like to know
>if ConTeXt has anything similar to babel, and, if not, how can similar
>results be achieved.

It's all there. 

  texexec --make --alone --language=en,it en 

should give you: 

0 words of font info for 0 preloaded fonts
57 hyphenation exceptions
Hyphenation trie of length 30696 has 798 ops out of 1501
  265 for language 8
  86 for language 6
  235 for language 5
  31 for language 3
  181 for language 2
No pages of output.
Transcript written on cont-en.log.

   additional patterns : en,it
      default language : en

            TeX binary : pdfetex
             format(s) : en

So, after that, when you run the english interface, you should be able to
switch to italian by saying 

\mainlanguage[it]

You will find more about labels and so in lang-ita.tex.

>The second one is support for bibliography: can BibTeX be used with ConTeXt?

yes, using tacos (preliminary) bibtex module

>The third one is about math. I do lots of mathematics, and I found AMS LaTeX
>very powerfull for my needs. From what I got reading the manual, I can
>surely have features like \newtheorem and alike in ConTeXt, with no problem
>(and maybe even with more power on customization); but, I haven't found
>anything about mathematics; can I use AMSTeX on ConTeXt?

yes, using tacos (preliminary) math module

>One last thing: I'd like to support/contribute to ConTeXt, helping in
>developing an italian interface and possibly translating the ConTeXt manual
>(when it will be complete). What can/should I do?

You may want to take a look at 

(1) mult-com.tex 
(2) mult-con.tex

where the translation tables are located and 

(3) grep on \startmessages

Of course there should be some coordination in this effort but it's not
even that much work. 

Hans
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
                                                  Hans Hagen | PRAGMA ADE
                      Ridderstraat 27 | 8061 GH Hasselt | The Netherlands
 tel: +31 (0)38 477 53 69 | fax: +31 (0)38 477 53 74 | www.pragma-ade.com
-------------------------------------------------------------------------

Re: Foreign Languages

[Ansuman Lahiri]

The file for the Indo-Iranian languages, lang-ind.tex, does not seem to
have been worked upon much. 

Are there plans to develop it?

-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Ansuman Lahiri                                    Tel:   +46-8-16 1310
Physical Chemistry Division                       Fax:   +46-8-15 2187
Arrhenius Laboratory                              Email: ansu@fos.su.se
Stockholm University                                 
S-10691 Stockholm
Sweden
--------------------------------------------------------------------------

Re: Foreign Languages

[Hans Hagen]

At 01:02 PM 9/12/00 +0200, Ansuman Lahiri wrote:
>
>The file for the Indo-Iranian languages, lang-ind.tex, does not seem to
>have been worked upon much. 

Anyone who can provide input is welcome, since I don't speak that languages. 

Hans
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
                                                  Hans Hagen | PRAGMA ADE
                      Ridderstraat 27 | 8061 GH Hasselt | The Netherlands
 tel: +31 (0)38 477 53 69 | fax: +31 (0)38 477 53 74 | www.pragma-ade.com
-------------------------------------------------------------------------

Re: Foreign Languages

[Robert F. Beeger]

>yes, using tacos (preliminary) bibtex module

It's probably useful to say that Taco's modules are available on:
<http://www.cybercomm.nl/~bittext/temp/>

Greets
     Robert

Re: Foreign Languages

[Giuseppe Bilotta (Oblomov)]

Thank you very much for your answer.
>
> You will find more about labels and so in lang-ita.tex.
>

I just did some work onlang-ita.tex

Reason for this is that classicly, in Italy you should use the guillemots to
begin and end the sentences, and upper quotes are required in quotations;
also, I'm changing some \setupheadtext for coherence with the LaTeX
definitions, and to correct some typos. I'd also like to know if the
headtexts left empty are to be left that way, or the correct name is to be
inserted.

> >One last thing: I'd like to support/contribute to ConTeXt, helping in
> >developing an italian interface and possibly translating the ConTeXt
manual
> >(when it will be complete). What can/should I do?
>
> You may want to take a look at
>
> (1) mult-com.tex

How do I change this files? The format is somewhat strange, and for some
of them I don't know the correct translation, or it's quite longish. Does
this pose any problem?

> (2) mult-con.tex

For this one, some other problems arise: names can depend on the gender of
the next word, or even on the starting letter: one is "uno" (the number, or
reffering to a male, and with the next word beggining with two consonants),
"un" is male, with next word beginning with simple consonant or with vowel,
and "una" is female; which should I put?

For both the previous files, is it possible to do something in such a way
that italian keys are defined, e.g., like english?

>
> where the translation tables are located and
>
> (3) grep on \startmessages

I translated them. This was the easy part :-)

>
> Of course there should be some coordination in this effort but it's not
> even that much work.
>

Does this mean that all I have to do is add the italian translation and then
send you the appropriate files?

--
Giuseppe Bilotta

Re: Foreign Languages / interface translation

[Hans Hagen]

At 05:30 PM 9/12/00 +0200, you wrote:

>definitions, and to correct some typos. I'd also like to know if the
>headtexts left empty are to be left that way, or the correct name is to be
>inserted.

It depends. I think you can add the labels after % so that users who want
them, can take their pick. I'm thinking of an option to set them as well as
turn them on and off. So, even if not normally used, just add them. 

>> (1) mult-com.tex
>
>How do I change this files? The format is somewhat strange, and for some
>of them I don't know the correct translation, or it's quite longish. Does
>this pose any problem?

Do not change the files yet. Just prepare a list first or make sure that we
can use a perl script to merge the files. We must not get out of tune. 

There is no problem in the length, but keep an eye on what users want. If
you don't know the translation yet, keep it english for the moment.  

>> (2) mult-con.tex
>
>For this one, some other problems arise: names can depend on the gender of
>the next word, or even on the starting letter: one is "uno" (the number, or
>reffering to a male, and with the next word beggining with two consonants),
>"un" is male, with next word beginning with simple consonant or with vowel,
>and "una" is female; which should I put?

Czech also has that problem. The 'one' is used as a stand alone number, in
mult-con there are only keywords and values. Although we may some day
consider a gender specific label prefix mechanism (when needed).  

>For both the previous files, is it possible to do something in such a way
>that italian keys are defined, e.g., like english?

yes: 

dutch: dutchkey    englishkey 
       germankey   czechkey 
       italiankey

>> (3) grep on \startmessages
>
>I translated them. This was the easy part :-)

All of them? That's fast! You can test that with the file cont-it.tex i'll
send you.   

  texexec --make --alone it 

will generate you a version with an english interface and italian messages.

>Does this mean that all I have to do is add the italian translation and then
>send you the appropriate files?

messages    : isolate them in one file
keys/values : add a header 'italian' and add keywords, use - for unknown
entries 

Hans

-------------------------------------------------------------------------
                                                  Hans Hagen | PRAGMA ADE
                      Ridderstraat 27 | 8061 GH Hasselt | The Netherlands
 tel: +31 (0)38 477 53 69 | fax: +31 (0)38 477 53 74 | www.pragma-ade.com
-------------------------------------------------------------------------

Re: Foreign Languages / interface translation

[Giuseppe Bilotta (Oblomov)]

----- Original Message -----
From: Hans Hagen <pragma@wxs.nl>
To: Giuseppe Bilotta (Oblomov) <oblomov@freemail.it>
Cc: <ntg-context@ntg.nl>
Sent: Tuesday, September 12, 2000 10:38 PM
Subject: Re: Foreign Languages / interface translation

> At 05:30 PM 9/12/00 +0200, you wrote:
>
> >> (1) mult-com.tex
> >
> >How do I change this files? The format is somewhat strange, and for some
> >of them I don't know the correct translation, or it's quite longish. Does
> >this pose any problem?
>
> Do not change the files yet. Just prepare a list first or make sure that
we
> can use a perl script to merge the files. We must not get out of tune.
>
> There is no problem in the length, but keep an eye on what users want. If
> you don't know the translation yet, keep it english for the moment.
>

The problem with length is that the list is too long :-); and while for some
words I can guess the meaning (or the context in which to use them), this is
not true for all of them; more over: when can I use accented letters, and
when can I not?

If my hypothesis is correct, I cannot use accented letters in mult-com nor
in mult-con; this poses some problem, since quite a lot of words actually
need the accent.

> >> (2) mult-con.tex
>
> Czech also has that problem. The 'one' is used as a stand alone number, in
> mult-con there are only keywords and values. Although we may some day
> consider a gender specific label prefix mechanism (when needed).

By stand alone number, do you mean something like [columns=one] ? in this
case, the gender should anyway be the one of the word it refers to (columns,
in this case)

>
> >For both the previous files, is it possible to do something in such a way
> >that italian keys are defined, e.g., like english?
>
> yes:
>
> dutch: dutchkey    englishkey
>        germankey   czechkey
>        italiankey

Sorry, I didn't express myself clearly: do I have to copy all of the
definitions, or do I just add the ones for which the word is different from
the english one?
(never mind, reading further I saw I have to do them all *sigh* it's a long
list!)

>
> >> (3) grep on \startmessages
> >
> >I translated them. This was the easy part :-)
>
> All of them? That's fast!

It's not that fast ... the real problems are mult-com and mult-con:
translating a list of words is much longer than translating a sentence ...

> You can test that with the file cont-it.tex i'll
> send you.
>
>   texexec --make --alone it
>
> will generate you a version with an english interface and italian
messages.

It *seems* to work (that is, with the "original" mult-com and mult-con, but
with all the messages translated).

>
> >Does this mean that all I have to do is add the italian translation and
then
> >send you the appropriate files?
>
> messages    : isolate them in one file

Uh-oh: I put them all in the corrispective files ... can you grep them out?
(I can't do it easily, being in a Win32 environment). I guess that you can
easily find them by looking for "italian" ...

> keys/values : add a header 'italian' and add keywords, use - for unknown
> entries

That's the hard part ... oh my! is there an "easy" way to do it?

And what about the corrected lang-ita.tex?

--
Giuseppe Bilotta

Re: Foreign Languages / interface translation

[Hans Hagen]

At 12:31 AM 9/13/00 +0200, Giuseppe Bilotta (Oblomov) wrote:

>If my hypothesis is correct, I cannot use accented letters in mult-com nor
>in mult-con; this poses some problem, since quite a lot of words actually
>need the accent.

The same was discussed with czech. The main problem here is that this is
very encoding specific and thereby dangerous. By using accents, you would
force users to use a specific one. Technically it's no problem. 

>By stand alone number, do you mean something like [columns=one] ? in this
>case, the gender should anyway be the one of the word it refers to (columns,
>in this case)

Again, it is technically possible, but it would increase context coding a
lot. Isn't there a way to refer to 'something'? neuter so to say?   

>Sorry, I didn't express myself clearly: do I have to copy all of the
>definitions, or do I just add the ones for which the word is different from
>the english one?
>(never mind, reading further I saw I have to do them all *sigh* it's a long
>list!)

Indeed. But also a good opportunity to learn context. 

>It *seems* to work (that is, with the "original" mult-com and mult-con, but
>with all the messages translated).

it had better work, since it's pretty old code -) 

>Uh-oh: I put them all in the corrispective files ... can you grep them out?
>(I can't do it easily, being in a Win32 environment). I guess that you can
>easily find them by looking for "italian" ...

No problem, as long as your .tex is renamed to .ita so that i don't have
the risk to overwrite mine. 

>> keys/values : add a header 'italian' and add keywords, use - for unknown
>> entries
>
>That's the hard part ... oh my! is there an "easy" way to do it?

you can turn it into an exercise in perl -) 

>And what about the corrected lang-ita.tex?

Just send it. 

Hans
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
                                                  Hans Hagen | PRAGMA ADE
                      Ridderstraat 27 | 8061 GH Hasselt | The Netherlands
 tel: +31 (0)38 477 53 69 | fax: +31 (0)38 477 53 74 | www.pragma-ade.com
-------------------------------------------------------------------------