Xref: utzoo comp.misc:7008 comp.unix.questions:16592 comp.windows.x:13806 sci.lang.japan:741 Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!ginosko!uakari.primate.wisc.edu!uwm.edu!ux1.cso.uiuc.edu!uxc.cso.uiuc.edu!tank!sophist!goer From: goer@sophist.uucp (Richard Goerwitz) Newsgroups: comp.misc,comp.unix.questions,comp.windows.x,sci.lang.japan Subject: Marketing wizardry & handling of far-east languages. Message-ID: <5557@tank.uchicago.edu> Date: 27 Sep 89 17:56:53 GMT References: <5508@zyx.ZYX.SE> Sender: news@tank.uchicago.edu Reply-To: goer@sophist.UUCP (Richard Goerwitz) Organization: University of Chicago Lines: 58 In article <5508@zyx.ZYX.SE> arndt@zyx.ZYX.SE (Arndt Jonasson) makes a very important request for information - one that makes we here in the US only to painfully aware of our almost pathological inability to think internationally, at least on the linguistic level: >This is a request for information. We are in the process of developing >software which among other things will handle natural languages other >than English in a useful manner. This software will mostly run in an >environment using the X Window System. Among the languages that raise >the most problems is Japanese, since the set of characters is so much >larger than the Latin alphabet. I have sent mail to several firms about this problem. Most replies have been of the ilk: We are aware of the problem of internationalization, and we are working on localizing the various versions of our software for various nationalities. The fundamental misconception is, of course, that localization is com- patible with internationalization. Every time a system is hacked for a new alphabet/font/wordwrap method, all the software needs to be hacked with it. Moreover, software written for a different situation in a different country needs to be "ported" to run in another country and another situation. And what of bi- or multi-lingual environments? Increasingly, English is being used in conjunction with national languages (e.g. India, and in the Far East, somewhat in Arabic-speaking countries, definitely in Israel). In places like Turkey, we have Arabic, Turkish, and then some English and other W. European languages being used by international firms. If we sell them "Turkish" versions of a given os or windowing package, it will not fit the real-life conditions of the market. A truly international windowing environment must offer basic support for: 1) proportional spacing on screen, with overstrikes (particularly important for Arabic) 2) various character sets used simultaneously in the same window 3) various wordwrap methods used simultaneously in the same win- dow Only in this manner can each country in which a product is marketed really have the same product (see the problems with EBCDIC transla- tion!), and likewise be able to run products easily that were devel- oped in other countries (and, I might add, to do it all at the same time). In short, Arndt Johanssen will be hard-pressed to find what he is looking for, at least in terms of some fundamentally international solution. He will probably have to settle for a short-sighted hack that some independent firm, or else some national branch of a larger firm, has developed to meet his particular sort of need. -Richard L. Goerwitz goer@sophist.uchicago.edu rutgers!oddjob!gide!sophist!goer