From: hasty@netcom.com (Amancio Hasty Jr) Subject: Re: Dumb Americans (was INTERNATIONALIZATION: JAPAN, FAR EAST) Date: 19 Dec 1992 05:18:58 GMT
In article <1992Dec18.235809.15484@midway.uchicago.edu> goer@midway.uchicago.edu writes:
>messina@netcom.com (Tony Porczyk) writes:
>>
>>>One of the big criticisms leveled at US Engineers is that they are either
>>>too dumb or lazy to build into their software support for non-Western
>>>scripts. Given that Linux originates in Europe, can we look forward to
>>>better support for Unicode and ISO10646? At least for "long" charac-
>>>ter definitions?
>>
>>Yeah, that's probably why NT supports Unicode, it's those dumb US
>>Engineers... Could we lay off idiotic generalizations and stick to
>>technical aspects of the software? It's business that dictates what's
>>included in the package. If it makes economic sense, it will be there.
>
>Don't be so quick to criticize. The December issue of UNIX world has
>a few funny stories about American gaffes in Europe, and I've personally
>heard many stories from Europeans myself along the same lines. I'd be
>willing to bet that less than 5% of US software engineers even speak a
>foreign language beyond the level of a few parlez vous. One of the big
>problems we have is precisely the attitude that you display, namely that
>most localizations should be done on-site. This is fine if multilingual
>support is built into the basic distributions, but really stupid if it
>isn't.
>
>As for economic sense, I have the same feeling about American's in the
>mid- and large-range computer business that I have about Detroit. They
>simply aren't as aware as they should be about what their customers
>really want. NT will be a welcome departure from the past, if in fact
>it offers true multilingual support. We'll see.
>
>--
>
> -Richard L. Goerwitz goer%midway@uchicago.bitnet
> goer@midway.uchicago.edu rutgers!oddjob!ellis!goer
Although not a major player in the market Unisys did offer
internalization on many of their applications.
The part that few US software engineers speak another language is
strange to me at least around here in Silicon Valley. What is strange
is to find a software engineer who only speaks english.
I speak Spanish and was raised in Puerto Rico :-)
Amancio Hasty
-- Amancio Hasty | Home: (415) 495-3046 | ftp-site depository of all my work: e-mail hasty@netcom.com | sunvis.rtpnc.epa.gov:/pub/386bsd/incoming