Richard Suchenwirth 2002-08-09 - In the Tcl chatroom we often notice what difference in greeting a timezone makes: morning in Germany is afternoon in Australia, etc. This brought me to think a little on the algorithm leading to selection of the appropriate greeting. Even just on the examples of English and German I notice that the boundaries appear not to be the same - "good afternoon" just cannot be translated to "guten Nachmittag", it is too un-idiomatic.
Contributions for other languages are gladly taken (as usual!-)
proc greet'en {} {
scan [clock format [clock sec] -format %H] %d hr
foreach {maxhr word} {
12 morning 18 afternoon 22 evening 99 night
} {if {$hr < $maxhr} break} ;# (1)
return "good $word"
}
proc greet'en-au {} {
return "G'day" ;# stevel
}
proc greet'de {} {
scan [clock format [clock sec] -format %H] %d hr
foreach {maxhr word} {
11 "n Morgen" 17 "n Tag" 22 "n Abend" 99 " Nacht"
} {if {$hr < $maxhr} break}
return Gute$word
}
proc greet'es-ar {} {
scan [clock format [clock sec] -format %H] %d hr
foreach {maxhr word} {
12 "os d��������������������������������as" 19 "as tardes" 99 "as noches"
} {if {$hr < $maxhr} break}
return buen$word
}
proc greet'fr {} {
scan [clock format [clock sec] -format %H] %d hr
foreach {maxhr word} {
19 "jour" 99 "soir"
} {if {$hr < $maxhr} break}
return bon$word
}
proc greet'pt {} {
scan [clock format [clock sec] -format %H] %d hr
foreach {maxhr word} {
12 "bom dia" 19 "boa tarde" 99 "boa noite"
} {if {$hr < $maxhr} break}
return $word
} % greet'en good afternoon % greet'de Guten Tag
(1): kennykb: "Good night" is non-idiomatic as a greeting. How about "Good heavens, why are you awake at this hour?"