Mail Archives: opendos/1997/04/04/19:18:36
nuqneH,
> From: "Matthias Paul" <MPAUL AT ibh DOT rwth-aachen DOT de>
> Organization: IBH, RWTH-Aachen
> To: opendos AT delorie DOT com
> Date: Fri, 4 Apr 1997 19:17:43 GMT+0100
> Subject: A vote for I18n (was Re: YesChar)
> Reply-to: Matthias DOT Paul AT post DOT rwth-aachen DOT de
[dd]
>
> But in Eastern Europe, in Far East, in South America, and in Africa
> the situation is much different. Computers are still a priviledge
> of the elite. Most of them were happy to own a computer at all, not
> to speak of what we call 'state-of-the-art-hardware'. For example,
> in Russia, home computers like the legacy Sinclair ZX81
ZX Spectrum exactly. BTW i never liked it. Russian home computers were much
better than that ugly not-very-computerlike videogamish basic-programmed
device.
> are very wide
> spread.
Were. Things changed much. That happened ~93 or so.
> Fortunately since some years, this is changing rapidly, IMHO
> caused by the immense grow of the Internet. But concerning spread of
> PC computers, many countries are still 10 years in back, so DOS is
> very attractive there.
No. That's not because we are "10 years back" - that's not true at all -
just i do not think Windoze is somehow.. even a minute "ahead" of DOS.
> Another problem of localization are input and output systems.
>
> Most people from the US and other English speaking countries
> do not/cannot realize, which problems people from foreign countries
> might have with the keyboard input and screen/printer output.
>
> Using a US keyboard layout and a screen font of 437, many were
> not able to use a PC and write texts in their mother language.
> The US keyboards offer only a small subset of the characters
> used in other languages. Some could not even reach all the
> characters needed if they would try to type them in all in via the
> <Alt>+NumPad method. Therefore, other codepages are needed in many
> countries (and we have to expand this capability).
>
We have our own keyboard and screen drivers - and most of us do not use generic
DOS language support at all.
> That's, why I didn't liked the example with the monitor turned upside
> down... Just imagine trying to write a text with your own keyboard,
> but half the keys were missing and the other half was rearranged.
> But of course, you could type it in octet notation, were this keyboard
> was optimized for. Further, the software was telling you to press
> <X>, but actually, you'd have to press <Y>. Also, you could not
> directly read a text on the monitor but could see only it's image in
> a mirror... Would you still be a computer fan?
BTW pressing "Y" for most of the people around here is much more easy than
pressing "D" (cyrillic? latin? which one? should i change current keyboard
language? What to do i if forgot to load keyboard driver?)
People who need total localization here will not use DOS. They run "latest"
version of Windoze on "best" computers.
---
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Must be a visit from the dead.. _| o |_ | | _|| | / _||_| |_ |_ |_
CU in Hell .......... Arkan#iD |_ o _||_| _||_| / _| | o |_||_||_|
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