[luatex] Translating TeX (obviously a feature request).

[Paul Isambert]

Selon Ulrike Fischer <luatex at nililand.de>:

> Am Sun, 01 Aug 2010 11:46:15 +0200 schrieb Paul Isambert:
>
> > Since LuaTeX reaches down to TeX's most intimate parts (its bowels, of
> course),
> > I was wondering whether there is any plan to give access to TeX's messages,
> e.g.
> > error messages or box reporting, and modify them. My idea is that it may be
> > interesting to have versions of TeX that speak any language, because those
> > messages could be written as one wishes.
>
> Well I can understand that this would be useful for users who don't
> speak english well. But one should not forget that log-file and
> terminal message are not only for the users. They are also used to
> get help and support either by showing other people the log or by
> googling the error messages. So it should be easy to get the
> standard terminal messages, and I would suggest that a "foreign" log
> should be additional so that you get the standard english log and
> eg. log-fr or log-de.

I don't know how gettext works, but with callbacks that would be quite easy:
change a file and you get messages in any language, including the original one.
Not to mention a command line option or a TeX primitive like \translatemessages
which when turned to 0 would disable message translation, for instance. And a
well-documented localised TeX should give the equivalence between translated
messages and original ones.

Best,
Paul