I’m about to write my first work of IF and for a starter, I thought I’d try to write one in my native language: Swedish. So I was very happy to find Felix Larsson’s Swedish extension. To check if the current Swedish build works with the current Inform build (6L02) I just wrote some dummy rooms and inserted the extension in the code. During compilation, several error messages pop up. Some have to do with synonyms for swear words, which I could do without for now. Like this one:
Problem. You wrote ‘Understand “tusan” as swearing’ : but ‘understand … as …’ should be followed by a meaning, which might be an action […etc…]
My layman’s guess is that this one is the result of “swearing” not being defined as a verb in the standard rules set. Anyway, I made a copy of the extension and deleted the lines that generated the errors. But then, two other errors enter, and my coding skills are still too basic to understand what they’re about (see below). So my first question is simply: can one use Swedish with Inform 7 (6L02) after some simple updates/bug removals, or would there still be a lot left to work on (i.e. hidden problems)? And if not, is the last recommended Inform 7 build to use with Swedish still 6G60?
[i]Problem. In ‘The Swedish describe what’s on scenery supporters in room descriptions rule is listed instead of the describe what’s on scenery supporters in room descriptions rule in the for printing a locale paragraph about rules’ , you gave ‘the describe what’s on scenery supporters’ where a rule was required.
Problem. In ‘The Swedish describe what’s on scenery supporters in room descriptions rule is listed instead of the describe what’s on scenery supporters in room descriptions rule in the for printing a locale paragraph about rules’ , you gave ‘room descriptions rule in the for printing a locale paragraph about rules’ where a rulebook was required.[/i]
The second you said: Swedish by Felix Larsson version 1/130128 can work only with 6G60.
I don’t know if anyone is working on a version compatible with 6L02. In any case, it’s a lot of work.
Graham Nelson has distributed to the translators a preview of the materials to build language extension for the actual Inform 7 release in 2011, so the lot of work could already be done.
However, I’m aware only of three language extensions complete or almost complete:
Spanish: github.com/sarganar/I7-2014-Spanish
French: bitbucket.org/informfr/i7-french-language/src
Italian: github.com/i7/extensions/tree/m … o%20Stella
In no one has already worked on a “Swedish Language” extension, maybe you can start from those three examples (saving at least the responses part of the old extension), but it’s sure that is a lot of work.
I’ve been toying with applying myself to the task, but as tetractys said, it’s a lot of work for what’s been, thus far, a rarely used extension.
Also, on a more speculative note, the syntax of the existing Swedish extension naturally departs from the idiom of Inform 7, which is that of natural-seeming prose. Given that later versions of preforms promise to eventually also translate the syntax of Inform 7 itself, one is awfully tempted to just wait until that capability arrives somewhere in the distant future.
Ok. Thanks for the quick replies. I think I’ll go ahead and use the 6G60 build + Swedish extension for this first “trainee” project then (it’s supposed to be a present for a friend). I’m just starting to learn Inform now, and I assume the difference between the syntaxes of 6G60 and 6L02 are not that big, so that I’d miseducate myself too much?
Remember to put this line in your code, so you’ll avoid (already in 6G60) those deprecated phrases that in 6L02 are completely removed: “Use no deprecated features.”
I just quickly glanced at the Spanish and French extensions mentioned above. Man, that’s a lot of code. But maybe Swedish could be simpler, I imagine the grammar is a little simpler… I think? Obviously, as a Swede I’m biased, but… We don’t have subject-verb agreement, for example.
Well, if anybody is considering making an updated Swedish extension, let me know and I’ll try to help.