terrell@cadnetix.COM (10/20/89)
More "Internationalization of Software" questions: I: Computer Printers It's clear that European paper sizes are different than in the US. However, what about popular computer printers: do they tend to (at least by default) print pages of 66 lines by 80 columns? What are the dimensions of the tractor feed paper that is loaded in the printers? II: Software Documentation & Orthography How does documentation differ in Europe? Do US software developers go to the trouble of converting to British spelling? Do British users resent it when they don't? Or perhaps the users don't care? Note that I'm talking only about the documentation. It's clear that (for example) a spelling checker would have to be converted to British orthography. Does US software/documentation usually get translated for countries that have relatively small user communities (e.g. Sweden)? If the answer is "No", would translation of a product give it a great competitive advantage over a similar, but non-translated product? Is there a big market for third-party native-language software documentation? In the US there's a big market for third-party software documentation because pirates don't like reading loose xerox copies, and so much software documentation isn't very good in the first place. III: Product Introduction After reading several overseas computer mags, I get the impression that (to be sarcastic) Europe is used as a beta-test site for US-developed software. I own SPRINT 1.0 which I believe is the most recent version available domestically, while users in Europe are using version 1.5. I've seen other cases... Does the European user community tend to get US products before their counterparts in the US? If so, is there a bias against US products due to buggy initial versions of software being offered first in Europe? Or do European users appreciate the chance to work with more recent versions of software? Once again, thanks in advance. I will try to post a summary of this dialog. Unfortunately, the results of this discussion two months ago have been dropped into the bit-bucket. Terrell
bl@infovax.UUCP (Bj|rn Larsson) (10/22/89)
In article <9995@cadnetix.COM> terrell@cadnetix.COM () writes: > >II: Software Documentation & Orthography > >Does US software/documentation usually get translated for countries that have >relatively small user communities (e.g. Sweden)? If the answer is "No", >would translation of a product give it a great competitive advantage >over a similar, but non-translated product? Larger packages, like word some word processors, speard-sheets, integrated packages etc get translated if the market justifies it. Programming lan- guages, programmers editors and special utilities usually don't since pro- fessional programmers know english well anyway, and the market is smaller (by comparison). As for DOS itself, IBM translates all DOS documentation, and all text strings in the programs themselves, to Swedish (and all other national languages too). To me it's a nuisance, since I prefer english. It looks so ridiculous in swedish many times, and sometimes the translations aren't right either. So I always try to get the english language versions, but it seems DOS 'in english' is getting hard to find on the swedish market. In general, I think it's a definite competitive edge here to have docs and prompts in the national language in question. About the rest of Europe, I know that in France it is regulated *by law* that in order to sell a computer product there, documentation in french *must* be available. I don't know how the law is obeyd - my company does export to France (both hardware and software) with english docs... As for population sizes for those who don't know, we're about 8 million people here in Sweden, and there are about 55 million in France. Both countries cover approximately the same land area. >III: Product Introduction > >After reading several overseas computer mags, I get the impression that >(to be sarcastic) Europe is used as a beta-test site for US-developed >software. I own SPRINT 1.0 which I believe is the most recent version >available domestically, while users in Europe are using version 1.5. But is Borland an American company? The original Turbo PASCAL was written by a danish guy (who admittedly now lives in the US). And (I may be very wrong about this but) isn't the company which owns Borland based in Sweden? I think I've seen something like that somewhere (but I think development - most of it - is actually done in the US). Further I know that Swedish Borland International has more or less forbidden US Borland to export to swedish distributors, since SW Borland wants Borland products in Sweden to have swedish docs. Therefore to get english docs, I had to buy my Turbo C Professional package from abroad (actually from Logicsoft in Holland). Isn't it weird? But to answer your question, I don't think Europe gets earlier releases than the US. Rather, the introduction of the same packages are probably done at the same time, or maybe somewhat later here. -- Bjorn -- ====================== InfoVox = Speech Technology ======================= Bjorn Larsson, INFOVOX AB : ...seismo!mcvax!kth!sunic!infovax!bl Box 2503 : bl@infovox.se S-171 02 Solna, Sweden : Phone (+46) 8 735 80 90
exspes@gdr.bath.ac.uk (P E Smee) (10/23/89)
In article <9995@cadnetix.COM> terrell@cadnetix.COM () writes: > >More "Internationalization of Software" questions: > >I: Computer Printers > >It's clear that European paper sizes are different than in the US. >However, what about popular computer printers: do they tend to >(at least by default) print pages of 66 lines by 80 columns? > Depends how you define popular. Most 'home-level' printers I've seen default to 8-1/2x11 (US size) paper (or 9-1/2x11 counting the tractor strips. This size paper also tends to be cheaper. Some people, like me, find it annoying. 'Serious use' printers tend to (at least switch selectably) default to A4, as that is the customary size for business correspondence, binders, etc. A4 is really sized in metric, but as a near-enough approximation A4 computer paper is 8-1/4x11-2/3 inches. The 11-2/3 is slightly wrong for A4, but means that the paper works neatly in a printer with a 6 lpi line throw. 80 columns wide is good enough (anyone who really needs more margin will handle that when they format things) but 66 lines is wrong -- A4 is 70 lines long. Again because of the split market, A4 tractor paper is more expensive than US size in the UK. A lot of this, though is because A4 is only easily available in high-grade 'letter quality' paper, while 8-1/2x11 is available in junk 'listings' grade. Still, if you are going to do any serious business- oriented software, WPs, etc, you've got to cater for A4. It's painfully tedious otherwise. But, you have to leave in 8-1/2x11 support as well, for the low-budget users. >II: Software Documentation & Orthography > >How does documentation differ in Europe? Do US software developers go >to the trouble of converting to British spelling? Do British users >resent it when they don't? Or perhaps the users don't care? > US developers don't normally seem to convert the docs. Since I'm bilingual, (US and UK :-) I tend not to care too much. Just be careful to keep the doc and the program consistent. Don't change the doc to talk about your 'COLOUR' command in BASIC if the BASIC interpreter still insists on your using 'COLOR'. More importantly is to be consistent. What's REALLY annoying is docs (or software) which SOMETIMES use British spelling and sometimes US. Then you never know where you are. >Note that I'm talking only about the documentation. It's clear that >(for example) a spelling checker would have to be converted to British >orthography. > Do note, though, that it should be CONVERTED. A lot of companies simply ADD British spellings to their US dictionary. That seriously compromises their usefulness, as the US spellings, most of which are WRONG in the UK, get left in and accepted. >Is there a big market for third-party native-language software >documentation? > Yes, for complicated packages e.g. Lotus 1-2-3, WordPerfect, Word, etc. Mostly for 3rd-party stuff designed to explain them to non-computer folk. > >III: Product Introduction > >After reading several overseas computer mags, I get the impression that >(to be sarcastic) Europe is used as a beta-test site for US-developed >software. I own SPRINT 1.0 which I believe is the most recent version >available domestically, while users in Europe are using version 1.5. >I've seen other cases... Does the European user community tend to get >US products before their counterparts in the US? If so, is there a bias >against US products due to buggy initial versions of software being >offered first in Europe? Or do European users appreciate the chance to >work with more recent versions of software? > This may simply be due to there being something like 3 times as many STs in Europe as in the US. -- Paul Smee | JANET: Smee@uk.ac.bristol Computer Centre | BITNET: Smee%uk.ac.bristol@ukacrl.bitnet University of Bristol | Internet: Smee%uk.ac.bristol@nsfnet-relay.ac.uk (Phone: +44 272 303132) | UUCP: ...!mcvax!ukc!gdr.bath.ac.uk!exspes
exspes@gdr.bath.ac.uk (P E Smee) (10/24/89)
One little thing I forgot to mention in my reply yesterday, in which I explained the size of A4 tractor feed (80 col by 70 lines is near enough). If you are writing something where 'beautiful page formatting' doesn't really matter, like say a compiler which produces printable listing files, and you don't want to special-case A4 support, there is still a little trick which makes life easier for users of A4 paper. That is, simply, to end your page with a FormFeed character, rather than counting lines and skipping to EOF using NewLines. Sure, a printer setup for A4 will then waste 4 lines per page, but at least each page will really be on a page rather than slowly creeping across the folds. People writing docfiles which are intended to be printed out by the user could well consider this idea as well. -- Paul Smee | JANET: Smee@uk.ac.bristol Computer Centre | BITNET: Smee%uk.ac.bristol@ukacrl.bitnet University of Bristol | Internet: Smee%uk.ac.bristol@nsfnet-relay.ac.uk (Phone: +44 272 303132) | UUCP: ...!mcvax!ukc!gdr.bath.ac.uk!exspes
dveditz@dbase.UUCP (Dan Veditz) (10/26/89)
In article <9995@cadnetix.COM> terrell@cadnetix.COM () asks: > How does documentation differ in Europe? Do US software developers go > to the trouble of converting to British spelling? Do British users > resent it when they don't? Or perhaps the users don't care? I have been involved with product translation tools the last six years. In the companies I've worked for all actual translation was done by subsidiaries or branch offices in the target country. In most countries everything has to be translated. England is a special case because we almost write the same language. It's up to whoever is in charge of marketing for England to decide how important it is. I know we translated it in the first company I worked for, but we sold to banks and other industries that might be more concerned than buyers of home PC software with how "proper" things are. > Does the European user community tend to get US products before their > counterparts in the US? Not where I've worked. At one company the tools, text resource files and documentation were not turned over until the product was completed. European versions of a 1.0 release were several months to a year behind the US release, but versions > 1.0 were usually quicker because only the changed text needs to be translated (anything unchanged can be brought forward from the previous release). In another company updates to the textual items and tools were released periodically as they changed during development, so the European releases were only a month or two behind the US. As an important note, from a developers point of view textual translations are easy. The hard stuff is dealing with different sizes of paper, different date formats, different currency formats, variable length currency symbols, decimal notation (many European countries reverse the US period and comma) and many other *format* changes. Any routines dealing with these things must be general and switchable, either as compile time options, or better, as user configurable options. My personal favorite was a mainframe-based office automation system that could run in any of up to 19 languages at once. Each user specified which of the loaded languages he or she wanted to use, and could change it at any time. Multiple languages sure ate up a lot of disk, though. As yet another aside, some Canadian government contracts we bid on *required* a system that was switchable between English and French. If your company has any aims in this direction, keep this in mind. -Daniel Veditz