Re: [Groff] Localization question

[Werner LEMBERG]

> Is there a clean way to know which package is in use ?

No, besides of testing the existence of specific registers, strings,
or macros.

> Actually I found that the package ms looks for a number register GS
> and mm for a string register PH in order to know if they have been
> already loaded.  Maybe the maintainers of the standard packages
> should define a unique string identifying the package ?

I suggest that you follow the current practice.  Those packages are
too old, and too many local customizations exist.  Something like this
should work, together with the aliasing mechanism to avoid multiple
strings with the same contents:

  .ds french-january foo\"
  .ds french-february bar\"
  ...
  .
  .if r GS \{\
  .  als MONTH1 french-january
  .  als MONTH2 french-february
  .  ...
  .\}
  .
  .
  .if d PH \{\
  .  als MO1 french-january
  .  als MO2 french-february
  .  ...
  .\}

etc.  BTW, don't forget to use something like \[e '] for `é' to have
glyph representations for accented letters independent of the input
encoding.

> By the way, let me know if such localization tmac files would be of
> interest and could be distributed with groff ?

Of course it is!  To add it to groff, I would need a copyright
disclaimer of you.


    Werner