.\" $Id: french-conjugator.1.in,v 1.13 2016/11/20 07:26:34 sarrazip Exp $
.\" french-conjugator - Analyzer of conjugated French verbs
.\" verbiste - French conjugation system
.\" Copyright (C) 2003-2009 Pierre Sarrazin <http://sarrazip.com/>
.\"
.\" This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or
.\" modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License
.\" as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2
.\" of the License, or (at your option) any later version.
.\"
.\" This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
.\" but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
.\" MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the
.\" GNU General Public License for more details.
.\"
.\" You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
.\" along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software
.\" Foundation, Inc., 51 Franklin Street, Fifth Floor, Boston, MA
.\" 02110-1301, USA.
.\"
.\"
.TH french-conjugator "1" "October 9th, 2017" "" ""
.SH NAME
french-conjugator - conjugate French verbs
.SH SYNOPSIS
.B echo aimer | french-conjugator > result.txt
.SH DESCRIPTION
\fBfrench-conjugator\fR
reads the infinitive form of French verbs from
the command line or from standard input
and writes (to standard output) the complete conjugation of those
verbs, if they are known.
.PP
The standard input is not read if verbs are passed as command-line
arguments.
.PP
Each mode and tense is introduced by a line that starts with a hyphen
and a space, and ends with a colon.
The mode and tense in that line are always in English, regardless
of the user's current locale.
(This is meant to facilitate automatic parsing of the output.
For a French user interface, see the GNOME application and applet.)
The conjugation is ended with a line that only contains a hyphen.
If the given verb is unknown or not in the infinitive form,
only this line is written.
.PP
The command flushes its output buffer after finishing each answer.
This allows the command to be easily called from another program
through two pipes.
.PP
The command starts by loading its database from XML files
(stored typically in /usr/share/verbiste-0.1).
This takes some time, so it is a good idea to have the command
answer many requests instead of running it for each request.
.PP
The verbiste library's source archive contains Perl and Java
example programs that illustrate this technique.
.PP
There must not be any leading or trailing white spaces on the lines read
by the command.
.PP
In the \fBpast participle\fR tense, four lines are written: they correspond
in order
to the masculine singular, masculine plural, feminine singular and
feminine plural.
.SH OPTIONS
.TP
\fB\-\-help\fR
display a help page and exit
.TP
\fB\-\-version\fR
display version information and exit
.TP
\fB\-\-lang=L\fR
select the language to use (\fBfr\fR for French or \fBit\fR for Italian);
French is the default language
.TP
\fB\-\-mode=M\fR
only display mode \fBM\fR, where \fBM\fR can be
\fBinfinitive\fR,
\fBindicative\fR,
\fBconditional\fR,
\fBsubjunctive\fR,
\fBimperative\fR or
\fBparticiple\fR
(\fBM\fR can also be a comma-separated list of modes)
.TP
\fB\-\-tense=T\fR
only display tense \fBT\fR, where \fBT\fR can be
\fBpresent\fR,
\fBpast\fR,
\fBimperfect\fR or
\fBfuture\fR
(\fBT\fR can also be a comma-separated list of tenses)
.TP
\fB\-\-pronouns\fR
show the pronouns
.TP
\fB\-\-all-infinitives\fR
print the infinitive form of all the verbs in the knowledge base,
one per line, unsorted; other command-line arguments are ignored
.TP
\fB\-\-data-dir=D\fR
Get the XML data files from directory D instead of the default one.
.SH EXAMPLES
$ french-conjugator aimer
.br
- infinitive present:
.br
aimer
.br
- indicative present:
.br
aime
.br
aimes
.br
aime
.br
aimons
.br
aimez
.br
aiment
.br
- indicative imperfect:
.br
aimais
.br
aimais
.br
aimait
.br
[...]
.br
- participle past:
.br
aim\('e
.br
aim\('es
.br
aim\('ee
.br
aim\('ees
.br
-
.br
.SH LICENSE
This program is free software; you may redistribute it under the terms of
the GNU General Public License.  This program has absolutely no warranty.
.SH AUTHOR
See the verbiste(3) manual page.
.SH BUGS
See the verbiste(3) manual page.
.SH SEE ALSO
verbiste(3), french-deconjugator(1).