terrell@druhi.ATT.COM (TerrellE) (07/01/89)
I know that there are some modifications that I will have to perform to "internationalize" software products developed for use in the USA. These changes include the obvious (translate the program and documentation into the right language). However, some of the other changes are more subtle. I'm sure that I've overlooked some, but here's what I have so far: Necessary changes to "internationalize" a software product: 1. Flexible date format: dd/mm/yy yy/dd/mm yy/mm/dd mm/dd/yy 2. Handle foreign daylight savings time. 3. Flexible radix (decimal) point (i.e. '.' or ','): 3.14159 3,14159 4. Allow English or Metric units. 5. Use "one thousand million" rather than "one billion". 6. Flexible time format: hh:mm hh.mm hh'mm 7. Allow either ' ' or ',' for thousands delimiters: 1,000,000 1 000 000 What else is necessary? Overseas users: what changes would you make to your "US Version" software to make it approprate for use in other countries? I'll post a summary of the results. Thanks in advance, Eric Terrell (att!druhi!terrell)
ts@chyde.uwasa.fi (Timo Salmi LASK) (07/02/89)
In article <4380@druhi.ATT.COM> terrell@druhi.ATT.COM (TerrellE) writes: >I know that there are some modifications that I will have to perform to >"internationalize" software products developed for use in the USA. >These changes include the obvious (translate the program >and documentation into the right language). However, some of the >other changes are more subtle. I'm sure that I've overlooked some, but >here's what I have so far: ... stuff deleted ... I do not have comments on the list that ensued, so it is not included. But why (quite seriously) should a program and documentation be translated? Anything that TRULY needs translation is very country specific anyway, and would not easily be produced in another country (to give an example: program for calculating personal taxes in Finland. And a counter example: Norton utilities, would it sell better in Dutch in Holland.) So why the language translation? Maybe there are good arguments for it. ................................................................... Prof. Timo Salmi (Site 128.214.12.3) School of Business Studies, University of Vaasa, SF-65101, Finland Internet: ts@chyde.uwasa.fi Funet: vakk::salmi Bitnet: salmi@finfun
agollum@engr.uky.edu (Kenneth Herron) (07/02/89)
RBase (a database program for PC's) allows you to specify the currency symbol used for currency values, as well as where it goes (before/after the digits), and how many digits go to the right of the decimal (ie, two for US dollars). It also lets you customize the date and time formats to your heart's content (You want AD and BC in your dates? You got it!). Most european users will be using ascii characters from the set above 127. Don't use the high bit of char values for anything, and don't strip it. MS-DOS allows any character from the upper half of the character set to be used in file names (In testing this statement, I just tried to create a file called <alt-2-0-0>.txt (#200 is a graphics character). The name was saved properly on my local floppy, but converted to H.TXT on my novell netware directory). Your hypothetical foreign user may be using a keyboard driver to map the keyboard to his character set (and even US users have the Dvorak set at their disposal) so don't do funny things with the keyboard interrupt. I believe characters #174 and #175 are quote characters in some languages. Some of the high-bit letters are upper-case and some lower-case. Some have both cases represented, some do not. ASCII order and alphabetical order are not the same when considering these foreign characters. One simple change is to let program messages and help text be read from a file instead of being hard-coded into the program. This lets your foreign user translate messages himself. Kenneth Herron
root@ambush.dk (Leif Andrew Rump) (07/02/89)
Make sure that your software is able to support 8 bit IBM ASCII and
not only 7 bit that only has [, \, ], {, |, and } because a _LOT_ of
european contries use special characters. For instance in Denmark we
use the concanation of: AE, OE, AA, ae, oe and AA (that is the old
writing style, now its: A and E put together, O with a slash, A with a
little circle on top, ae put together, o with a slash and a with a
little circle on top!). And that isn't that bad! If your application
is able to sort text THEN you got trouble!!! The three Danish letters
is just appended to the alphabet after Z but some other contries
insert characters different places!!!
Leif Andrew Rump, AmbraSoft A/S, Roejelskaer 15, DK-2840 Holte, Denmark
UUCP: leif@ambra.dk, phone: +45 42424 111, touch phone: +45 42422 817+313
> > > Why are tall Irish girls with red hair so wonderful ? ? ? < < <root@ambush.dk (Leif Andrew Rump) (07/03/89)
no b6 GMT
References: <4380@druhi.as IkOM>
Organization: AmbraSoft, Holte, Denmark
Lines: 15
Xref: att comp.sys.ibm.pc:958 sci.astro:63
Make sure that your software is able to support 8 bit IBM ASCII and
not only 7 bit that only has [, \, ], {, |, and } because a _LOTeuropean contries use special characters. For instance in Denmark we
use the concanation of: AE, OE, AA, ae, oe and AAwriting style, now its: A and E put together, O with a slash, A with a
little circle on top, ae put together, o with a slash and a with a
little circle on top!). And that isn't that bad! If your application
is able to sort text THEN you got trouble!!! The three Danish letters
is just appended to the alphabet after Z but some insert characters different places!!!
Leif Andrew Rump, AmbraSoft A/S, Roejelskaer 15, DK-2840 Holte, Denmark
UUCP: leif@ambra.dk, phone: +45 42424 111, touch phone: +45 42422 817+313
> > > Why are tall Irish girls with red hair so wonderful ? ? ? < < <ericbr@microsoft.UUCP (Eric Brown) (07/04/89)
In article <622@chyde.uwasa.fi> ts@chyde.uwasa.fi (Timo Salmi LASK) writes: >I do not have comments on the list that ensued, so it is not >included. But why (quite seriously) should a program and >documentation be translated? Anything that TRULY needs translation >is very country specific anyway, and would not easily be produced in >another country (to give an example: program for calculating >personal taxes in Finland. And a counter example: Norton utilities, >would it sell better in Dutch in Holland.) So why the language >translation? Maybe there are good arguments for it. > Well, many "horizontal" applications (spreadsheets, for example) tend to sell quite well in many countries. However, these countries have differing standards about how times and dates are formatted, not to mention different currency symbols. Internationalization is far more than translating the documentation and the strings in the program; it's supporting multiple currency formats (with 1992 approaching, many countries will want to have dollars, pounds, francs, and what have you all in the same spreadsheet...), etc. Eric. ...!uunet!microsoft!ericbr
sunesen@iesd.dk (Peter Sunesen) (07/04/89)
There have ben some writing about internationalization of software, and I want to give a comment: We in Denmark (Europa) have the litte but big problem that we belong to the contries, witch is cald scandinavien.... Ad a IBM will that say that there is a problem with the ascii code tabel 865. Ok IBM have solvede it in ascii 850... but were is the grech characters ???? The bigest problem for me as a danish person the to characters 155 and 157 witch in Denmark is continiued to the ordanary characters... In the rest of the world is those charaters knoven as yen and cent, and you can at some reson not use the characters 155 and 157 as input in some programes...??? What we want is that you out there in the big world will include or make the characters includebel... so I can write danish in all programs. So a littel prayer from a danish.... Make the scandinavien charcters so they can be usede... The scandinavien Characters: 9B 9D 9E 9F A6 A7 A9 AA AB AC AE AF Peter Sunesen a Danish
wnp@attctc.DALLAS.TX.US (Wolf Paul) (07/04/89)
In article <622@chyde.uwasa.fi> ts@chyde.uwasa.fi (Timo Salmi LASK) writes: >But why (quite seriously) should a program and >documentation be translated? Anything that TRULY needs translation >is very country specific anyway, and would not easily be produced in >another country (to give an example: program for calculating >personal taxes in Finland. And a counter example: Norton utilities, >would it sell better in Dutch in Holland.) So why the language >translation? Maybe there are good arguments for it. Norton Utilities in Dutch is not a good example, since your average Dutchman is more likely to speak/read English than, for example, your average Frenchman, German or national of any number of other countries. I think that in Finland, too, computer users are more likely to know English than in many other European countries, which explains (to me at least) why you question this. Also, Norton is geared to the at least somewhat technically inclined user, who again is more likely to at least read technical English than your average secretary. And secretaries constitute the largest group of users of such software as Word Processors, Spreadsheets, and Data Base Programs. All of the commands and menu displays in Microsoft Word, for example, are based on English Words which often have no meaning whatsoever to a German or Frenchman. The same is true of the names of both built-in and external MS-DOS commands, as well as other operating systems. Even in a mouse-oriented system like a MAC, or Windows or GEM under DOS, the menu choices can be made MUCH more meaningful if translated.