- PART I
Hello international friends,

I'm implementing multi-language in muLinux, because I found it very
pedagogical to realize. There the outlines I'm using. I think this is
smart solution but, anyway,  any comment from you is highly appreciated.

The simple idea is to substitute any "echo" and "cat" command in Setup,
wizards, boot scripts, etc, with a single command I called "tell"
(because "say" it is already used as synth command).
I developed "tell" as simple AWK command, using the hashes, i.e. array
with generalized indexing.

You can use "tell" everywhere you would use "echo".

Examples:

		tell "The month is March"
	 
or
		tell <<END
		The month is March
		I like the penguin
		END


How it works?
--------------
It simply seach a corrispondence in a DB ( a file ), using hashes.
If no corrispondence is found, it simply output the fractured english
in input. This feature grants that every script still will works also
without translation. 


DB format
----------

Very simple: it use escape code as AWK separators. This is the
template:

	fractured-english sentence
	^A
	translated sentence
	^B
		
ad libidum, .... Multilines are allowed, because record separator in 
^B ( \002 octal) and field separator is ^A ( \001 octal)

We have here an noticeable amount of redondance, because the the
english sentence is doubled: in the original script, in the DB. 

But the advantage is insuperable: we can cooperate in translation,
starting from  a simple identical file. Sentences aren't numbered, etc. 

DBs are simple files. it, en, de, fr, etc ..., stored in some
directory.


"tell" really learn sentences
----------------------------

When I run a script containing the command "tell", any new sentence
is cached in the DB. The "translated sentence" is, at beginning, simply
the keyword "-0-".
When I finished running every script or setup, the DB is filled with
these values. So, I can now open the DB and replace the "-0-" keyword with
translation.

I proceed with interate approximations, because at the few first run, the
language seems more fractured of normal, with a very pictoresque mixture
of italian and "fractured english"

Here-documents and string substitution
---------------------------------------

What happen with code fragment as:

                echo "The NIC card is $CARD"  ?

Because the simpe replacement:

                tell "The NIC card is $CARD"  ?

is very bad (it fill the DB with different sentences, one per CARD),
it is replaced with:

		tell "The NIC card is %s" | printf -r $CARD


so we have to translate one sentence: "The NIC card is %s".

yes: I hacked a bit the "printf" command. Now, using the option -r,
it can read the C-language string format from standard input.

The trick covers also this case:

	tell <<END | printf -r $IO $IRQ $CARD `date`
	The IO is %s,
	the IRQ is %s and the card is %s
	Current time is %s
	END


Conclusions
------------

The only big disadvantage I can see a this moment is that: if I
change a single character in some string in Setup, the "tell" will
fail extracting the corrispondence, and it simply outputs the new
fractured sentence.

We need of fuzzy logic, separated name spaces, etc in order to do
a really good work, or muLinux starts to speak an own kind 
of experanto babele-language!


- PART II 
 
I managed to put a rudimental form of fuzzy-logics in the "tell" command.
This is a fashinating question, i'm enjoyng with the subject.

Fuzzy, i.e. approximate pattern matching, is being introduced in muLinux
using the standard mulinux gate: i.e. the rustic gate :-)

You know the subject: "tell" consult a DB to find the traslation of
a sentence. The DB is simply a list of pairs (x,y) in a file, where
x="rustic english sentence"  and y="translated sentence". Sentences
may spans over several lines:

Examples: segment from it.db

=======================================================================
^B

        You may want to give the PASSWORD and/or an USER_NAME
        required by the server. Otherwise, leave blank.


^A
        Potresti voler specificare la PASSWORD e/o l'utente
        (USER_NAME) richieste dal server. Altrimenti, lascia bianco.
=======================================================================

The problem is: If someone modify "y", no problem. "Tell" use the "x"
field to get a translation.
But if I modify "x" in the Setup scripts? "Tell" is unable to find
the right "y", because sentences aren't numbered.

So, I introduced approximate pattern matching in AWK: if changes
are not relevant for "x", the good "y" is always chosen.
I introduced also a "threshold": if score<thereshold, the "tell"
program simply outputs "x", not "y".

How it works? (still experimental)
--------------
When you write:

			tell "my name is Bond"

the program scan the DB and compile a dictionary for every "x"
sentence. Any word is simply replaced with a single character A,B,C ...
The original sentence is rewritten using the new dictionary, as
a single string like ACDE, ABFH, etc.

Example: is the program found "is Bond from England?" , this second
is converted as "ABCD" and "my name is Bond" is converted as "CD".

A this point, I can use standard function in AWK that handles
regular expressions and wild-cards, such match(), etc. 


                     match("ABCD","[CD]+")

mAWK return also the "length of the match", in this case 2, and
score is 50%.