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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] 
In-reply-to: Your message of "Thu, 31 Aug 1995 06:18:11 PDT."
             <9828.809875091@time.cdrom.com> 
Date: Fri, 01 Sep 1995 03:24:54 +0200
From: "Julian Stacey <jhs@freebsd.org>" <jhs@vector.eikon.e-technik.tu-muenchen.de>
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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