TLUG involvment with Japanese Software Community [was Re: tlug: Re: MagicPoint (was: VFLib Documentation)

[craigoda@example.com]

From: "Jonathan Byrne" <jpmag@example.com>
Subject: Re: tlug: Re: MagicPoint (was: VFLib Documentation)
Date: Fri, 29 May 1998 01:45:40 +0900

jpmag> -----Original Message-----
jpmag> From: craigoda@example.com <craigoda@example.com>
jpmag> 
jpmag> >BTW, Ruby is supposed to be pretty kick-butt and gaining
jpmag> popularity
jpmag> >fast.  However, because it was developed in Japan, it is
jpmag> not widely
jpmag> >known outside of Japan.
jpmag> 
jpmag> I'm inside Japan and don't know it either :-)  What is it?

>From the Ruby Home Page  	http://www.netlab.co.jp/ruby/
Ruby is the interpreted scripting language for quick and easy 
object-oriented programming. It has many features to process text 
files and to do system management tasks (as in perl). It is simple, 
straight-forward, and extensible. 


jpmag> Jumping back to the original subject of your post again, I
jpmag> think your comments on involvement in Japanese software for
jpmag> Linux are right on.  I don't quite have the grounding yet in
jpmag> Linux to do decent translations of the documentation yet (I
jpmag> don't think so, anyway) and I'm also stacked to my eyeballs

Because translation is so time consuming, we may be able to
get better results by cooperation.  People could start things
and leave unfinished work in a central repository for other
people to work on if they wanted to.  


jpmag> Another area that may emerge is what might be called
jpmag> "reverse localization."  That is, taking software that was
jpmag> originally written in Japanese and localizing it to English
jpmag> or other languages, while retaining it's Japanese input
jpmag> capability.  Right now, Applix is being localized to

It might be better to aim for "internationalization."   Since the
software already supports Japanese input and display, it supports Latin
character input and display.   We could even refer to this
type of software as I18N.   Since we would write the documentation
in English, we could encourage testing with Korean, Chinese, and
other languages.  

jpmag> people are saying about it.)  Not that many people in the
jpmag> world could use it as-is, so groups like TLUG may find
jpmag> themselves helping with producing English versions of
jpmag> Japanese software in the future.  If the very high quality

I think that most of the Japanese developers are aiming for 
an internationalized version.  However, IMHO documentation is
a major stubling block.  If we could help them out with documentation
and maybe the spelling or terminology for menu items, I think
most Japanese software can be used in English-speaking countries.

In case you didn't know, the same X software can have different
language and country characteristics using the Locale, "LC_ALL"
string.  This is usually read in by the LANG environment variable.
So, if I set LANG to ja_JP.EUC it could have Japanese menus.  If the
same program were used on a Linux box with the LANG variable set
to en_US, C or unset, it could display English menus and other stuff.


BTW, more people from TLUG should join the Linux Fair mailing list and
help out with the planning.  I think Joe Marchak and myself are the
first round of volunteers to man a booth there.  

  
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Regards,
Craig

----
Craig Oda   craigoda@example.com   http://tlug.linux.or.jp/~craigoda

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