Date: Mon, 17 Nov 1997 20:41:28 -0700 (MST) From: Wes Peters <softweyr@xmission.com> To: Nadav Eiron <nadav@cs.technion.ac.il> Cc: chat@freebsd.org Subject: Re: The Language Barrier [Was: Could FreeBSD be ...] Message-ID: <199711180341.UAA11180@obie.softweyr.ml.org> In-Reply-To: <Pine.GSO.3.95-heb-2.07.971117115250.11629A-100000@csd> References: <Pine.BSF.3.96.971117002710.5225A-100000@andrsn.stanford.edu> <Pine.GSO.3.95-heb-2.07.971117115250.11629A-100000@csd>
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Nadav Eiron writes:
> Well, Microsoft thought otherwise (at least temporarily). With WFWG 3.11
> the Hebrew version was fully bilingual, i.e. you could choose at install
> time whether you want the menus, system messages, help files, etc. in
> Hebrew or English. When they first started selling Win95 Hebrew Edition it
> was Hebrew only.
An excellent example, but they didn't convert the operating system
itself to Hebrew. They didn't, for instance, come up with a Hebrew
version of the standard libraries. The FreeBSD equivalent would be to
replace the write(2) system call with ecriver(2) for French-speaking
programmers. Now imagine adding (and requiring) diacritical marks to
the alphabet for your C/C++/Java/etc. compiler. I shudder at the
thought.
I know at least one COBOL compiler did this. I guess it was no worse
than a COBOL program I once saw that came from a public utility in
Quebec: all the verbs in the program were english and the nouns french.
Made the program an utter nightmare to comprehend. ;^)
--
"Where am I, and what am I doing in this handbasket?"
Wes Peters Softweyr LLC
http://www.xmission.com/~softweyr softweyr@xmission.com
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