Date: Fri, 01 Sep 1995 03:24:54 +0200 From: "Julian Stacey <jhs@freebsd.org>" <jhs@vector.eikon.e-technik.tu-muenchen.de> To: "Jordan K. Hubbard" <jkh@time.cdrom.com> Cc: petri@ibr.cs.tu-bs.de, current@freebsd.org Subject: Re: gencat bloat [Re: /usr/src/usr.bin/ee] Message-ID: <199509010124.DAA09586@vector.eikon.e-technik.tu-muenchen.de> In-Reply-To: Your message of "Thu, 31 Aug 1995 06:18:11 PDT." <9828.809875091@time.cdrom.com>
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>> From petri@ibr.cs.tu-bs.de > > FYI: Inflating the FreeBSD system with extensive use of > > internationalisation thingies would be a very well reason for me and > > the people around me to throw out the FreeBSD installations. Small is > > beautiful. At the very least, make the stuff optional to install. > From: "Jordan K. Hubbard" <jkh@time.cdrom.com> > I don't see the problem. > ... > The whole world > does not speak english, as much as we americans would sometimes like > it to.. :-) The technically competent computing world Can Read English ( not necessarily speak or write it well, but that doesn't matter, passive (as opposed to active) vocabulary is the pre-requisite in the computer industry). If we attract people who can't even _read_ English, they'll flood us with ignorance & noise, & error reports for each language you provide :-( In '85 I automated production of 7 different European language versions of Sinix for Siemens Munich. I learnt : - The more computer illiterate the market segment, the greater the desire for local language translation. - Those who couln't even read English manuals, weren't much use. - It's easy to do a bodge job translating, harder to do it well, more work to maintain all language versions, against a changing code base. - It's hard to debug in `foreign' (eg I created a dest/ from a src/ in Swedish, but can't read Swedish, so quality testing the Unix even to simple "File not found" level was inefficient. `Foreign' porting is amusing to tinker with, & is easy to get into, but it's poor strategy for a group of volunteer programmers. Let's not burden ourselves by actively encouraging recruitment of people who can't even _read_ the computer industry's common language. Julian S
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