From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-2.9 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,MAILING_LIST_MULTI autolearn=unavailable autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Thread: 103376,699cc914522aa7c4 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII Path: g2news2.google.com!news3.google.com!border1.nntp.dca.giganews.com!nntp.giganews.com!newsfeed00.sul.t-online.de!t-online.de!feeder.news-service.com!newsgate.cistron.nl!xs4all!news.wiretrip.org!proxad.net!cleanfeed1-b.proxad.net!nnrp6-1.free.fr!not-for-mail Return-Path: X-Greylist: delayed 771 seconds by postgrey-1.24 at green; Wed, 07 Feb 2007 21:51:34 CET From: "Randy Brukardt" To: Subject: RE: Wasteful internationalization Date: Wed, 7 Feb 2007 14:39:30 -0600 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-Priority: 3 (Normal) X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook IMO, Build 9.0.6604 (9.0.2911.0) In-Reply-To: X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V6.00.2800.1807 Importance: Normal X-Trash-Finder: Limited filtering for message, local (outbound) source X-Virus-Scanned: amavisd-new at ada-france.org X-BeenThere: comp.lang.ada@ada-france.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.9rc1 Precedence: list List-Id: "Gateway to the comp.lang.ada Usenet newsgroup" List-Unsubscribe: , List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Message-ID: X-Leafnode-NNTP-Posting-Host: 88.191.17.134 Organization: Guest of ProXad - France NNTP-Posting-Date: 07 Feb 2007 21:55:03 MET NNTP-Posting-Host: 88.191.14.223 X-Trace: 1170881703 news-4.free.fr 27163 88.191.14.223:34831 X-Complaints-To: abuse@proxad.net Xref: g2news2.google.com comp.lang.ada:9093 Date: 2007-02-07T21:55:03+01:00 [I'm trying to use the Ada-France comp.lang.ada scheme, as I'm using a new Internet provider without a news server (or at least they won't tell me where one is. So I've missed a couple of days messages, hopefully I'm not repeating stuff.] Bj�rn Persson writes (mostly responding to me): > Markus E Leypold wrote: > > > "Randy Brukardt" writes: > > > >> Anyway, the discussion point was the readability and portability of Ada > >> sources. > > I thought the discussion point was whether it's OK to occasionally include a > non-ASCII character in an otherwise English-language Usenet post. I hope you're kidding. That side discussion erupted over examples of the readability of Ada sources. > >> You can probably get by ignoring the exact content of strings, > >> but that's impossible with identifiers. So a program with Chinese > >> identifiers is going to be unreadable to someone outside of China. > > Conversely, a program with English identifiers and comments may not be so > easy to read to someone *in* China. Many people over there are rather bad > at English. A Chinese programmer team at a Chinese company on the Chinese > market may well choose to write in Chinese because it makes the code more > readable and maintainable *to them*. That's fine if they never want any help. If they post a question here with that program, the odds are that they won't get many, if any answers. Most of us will see nothing except a bunch of boxes. (Indeed, if you're using the e-mail version of cla, and have a decent spam filter, you'll never see the thread in the first place.) Similarly, if someone was to ask for help with Janus/Ada and sent such a program, I wouldn't be able to do anything for them. That's not good for either us (it does not allow us to provide support up to the level of our standard) nor for the customer. The point is that if you want to be part of the Ada *Community*, you have to use characters that the vast majority of the Community can understand. If you don't care or expect any help or sharing, then it doesn't matter. A number of us were very strongly opposed to the PI thing, simply because it suggests that program abuse of this type is OK. > And as Markus demonstrates below, if > they'd try to write in English the code might end up illegible to you > anyway: > > > A small number > > of comments were in english which became more understandable after > > translating it into german word for word (i.e. w/o looking at the > > possible meaning, just use "Speicher-Loch" for " memory hole" (which > > should have been "memory leak") etc. The identifiers were just > > nonsense or bad english too. > > See? Their attempt to write in English didn't help much. This isn't a matter > of character encodings at all; it's a matter of knowledge of languages. Not relevant. I've had to provide technical support for programs with foreign language comments. It's not fun, but it is possible because you can just follow the identifiers. You can't do that if the ids are just blocks of square boxes -- they'll all look the same. > And once again: There's a big difference between a Chinese text and a > well-known mathematical symbol which just happens to be a Greek letter. And that's irrelevant to the primary thread (which is programs written primarily in non-Latin-1 fonts). I personally don't mind program texts that stick to the roughly 600 characters that are available in most Windows fonts. But other people's systems may vary as to what is available. And I don't want to encourage use of characters that can't be displayed by most. So a "single Greek character" is an example of the slippery slope to obblivion: people are not going to stop there. Randy.