On 12.03.2010 23:16, Martin Rex wrote:
...
The IETF is not in the publishing business, and if you want to get
a scientific paper with pretty diagrams, math formulas, photos
in languages other than english and filled with fancy characters
from all over unicode, then you probably should go to either
one of the commercial publishers (a big one or a small one
like books-on-demand), but not to the IETF Editor.
...
The IETF is in the "business" of defining and publishing standards. If
people ignore them because of their format, that is a problem.
Reflowing ASCII-formatted RFCs/I-Ds is really not very difficult,
if that is what some people need desperately for their SmartPhones.
Considering that NRoffEdit is fairly good at reflowing ASCII-formatted
I-Ds back into authoring .nroff source (which is still significantly
more readable and comprehensible than any XML and HTML btw.),
then providing such a tool for those gadget is probably two magnitudes
less work than implementing an HTML rendering engine. Making such
Great. Do it.
In the meantime, I'm not going to implement an HTML rendering engine,
because I don't have to. They are already there.
...
The ultimate disaster of I18N/L10N is what Microsoft did with Office97
when they localized the VBA keywords (one of the reasons why some
companies stopped using localized MS Office versions back then).
...
Yes. Been there. Seen it. Your point being?
...
Trouble started when I was first faced with "localized" versions of
operating systems and application (from Microsoft and IBM), because
it was almost incomprehensible to me. It felt strange to read words
in a documentation that sound like they're from your own language
but don't make any sense to you such as "serielles Zeigeinstrument" (IBM).
...
Yes.
I use English versions on my work computer as well. It makes it easier
to communicate with other programmers. For instance, by avoiding
localized error messages from compilers. Gasp.
But that doesn't mean localization is useless. Unless you succeed in
teaching everybody (not only programmers) English.
Nobody right now is asking for the specification *language* to change.
If air treffic controllers would start using only local/national terminology
when talking to pilots, then the number of accidents would increase
significantly.
I see it as a benefit not having to learn the local language of a
country before being able to go there and use a phone, drive a car,
go shopping, use some multimedia equipemnt or even a computer.
But then, you're not an average person with respect to this. Nor am I,
or anybody reading this.
It's less of a problem if you can easily switch the technology
between localizations while using it--which, fortunately, is becoming
more an more common. The important part is, that internally, the
technology should use a single common format, the localization should
only affect the output, not the processing. The are OSes that use
UTC internally and localtime() in a sane fashion, and unfortunately
there is one, that doesn't -- causing lots of interop pain, with others
and with other incarnations of itself and even with itself.
And then there are operating systems that use octet sequences instead of
Unicode characters for file names. What an interop desaster.
Can we please avoid the OS bashing, if what we're talking about is the
IETF publication format?
I congratulate SAP for their bold vision in extending their operations
beyond the bounds of planet Earth.
In the IETF people participate as indiviuals, unless explicitly
state otherwise, and despite many of the participants having
corporate sponsors paying for some or all of the expenses and
contributions.
Right.
Best regards, Julian
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