From: eps@rieska.oulu.fi (Erkka Sutinen) Subject: Re: Dumb Americans (was INTERNATIONALIZATION: JAPAN, FAR EAST) Date: 21 Dec 1992 13:30:20 GMT
russed@rebecca.its.rpi.edu (Daniel Russell) writes.
> As a (kind of) side note, I have heard that the NeXT has *excellent*
>foreign language support.
If anyone is interested, NeXT's system is basically this: Every program is an
directory. (directory for unix side, and an application for GUI) This directory
has binary program and resources. Resources are graphics and UI's in NIB
(NeXT Interface Builder) files as well as files containing texts that program
prints. Resoures are put into subdirectories, one for each language.
To localize an program for an new language you just copy files to an new
directory, take text editor and write new texts, take IB and edit user
interfaces to have suitable texts, and that's it.
Problem is that programs have to be started through windowing system. Therefore
this schema doesn't suit for Linux, even though it could be possible to make
an special window manager for X+Linux to support full localization, but this
would make Linux incompatible.