I once installed MS PWS and found that the configuration was web-based. I turned off a few checkboxes on the configuration page. Then, the configuration page never appeared again.
I love simple methods for configuration, like plain text.
Greek is relatively an easy language for softwares to support, than other
language like Chinese, Japanese, Thai, Hindi, Arab, Hebrew, and so on.
Locale is a mechanism and framework for i18n and has been used for
tens of years. (At least, every east Asian Linux users can do nothing
without locale mechanism.)
Unicode will be used within the framework of locale,
i.e., through UTF-8 locales.
Your software (which needs recompile to support Greek) seems not to
use locale framework. Your problem seems to be very easy and you
don't even have to use Unicode to solve your problem.
For non-Latin-script-language speakers and, especially, multibyte-language speakers, many softwares which cannot handle their native languages are useless.
I am not saying about translation. For example, word processors which cannot process their native letters (like Hiragana, Kanji, Hangul, Arab, Thai, and so on), editors which cannot edit their native letters, window managers, which cannot display their native letters on the window titles, and so on. Thus most of softwares are useless so far. Therefore, we cannot choose softwares in the viewpoint of personal preference but we have to choose softwares only because these softwares can handle our native languages.
In such world where we can use a limited subset of free softwares, there were a few remarkable softwares released this year. Vim 6.0 with multibyte encodings support (Unicode is one of such encodings), Emacs21 with locale (LC_CTYPE) sensibility, and so on.
I hope in the end of next year the "subset" of softwares which can handle multibyte characters will be increased considerably and I will be able to join this type of discussion!
Do we still need wsetfont, a small utility to configure fonts
for various languages?
Since font specification of Window Maker is based on Latin-1
and not internationalized, non-Latin-1 people need to invoke
wsetfont to display our native language on the window titles.
I tried to write a patch, like I wrote a patch for TWM,
Sawfish, IceWM, and so on.
(Thus, all we need to do is to set locale [i.e., LANG, LC_CTYPE,
or LC_ALL variable] for these window managers to handle i18n
characters.)
However, it was difficult to
write a patch because Window Maker is made from two parts
of core and widgets. I had no idea how to communicate
the mode (XFontStruct mode or XFontSet mode) between the
core and widgets. Are there anyone who are willing to try
this problem?
(I wonder how many non-Latin-1 people live in the Slashdot community.)
Electric "disks" (such as memory device) are always researched in order to replace mechanical disks. The biggest problem is the cost. If this problem would be solved, "disks" (it would not be disk-shaped) would be drastically faster than today's disks.
I think one of difficulties of voice recognition is like handwriting recognition; it is *very* different between languages.
European languages (such as English, French, German, Italian, Spanish,...) are rather similar one another. However, the world is far larger. The number of vowels and consonants are very different between languages (European, east Asian, south-east Asian, Arab,...).
I mentioned that because I didn't know how Miyazaki anime is popular in countries other than Japan. Thus I thought that it is natural that non-Japanese people don't know how Miyazaki anime is popular in Japan.
FYI: Disney anime movies are also very popular in Japan, though I feel they are a little less popular than Miyazaki anime. It is only my feeling, not statistics.
I like Miyazaki anime very much. However, in Japan, Miyazaki anime is not only for otaku people but also for all average children and adults. Miyazaki's anime movies earn as much as Holywood movies in Japan.
Slashdot Mirror
NTT Docomo's phone users have to pay for each received mail.
It is said that automatic probable NTT-Docomo-phone-addresses generators
are sold.
I once installed MS PWS and found that the configuration was web-based. I turned off a few checkboxes on the configuration page. Then, the configuration page never appeared again.
I love simple methods for configuration, like plain text.
I am not saying about translation. For example, word processors which cannot process their native letters (like Hiragana, Kanji, Hangul, Arab, Thai, and so on), editors which cannot edit their native letters, window managers, which cannot display their native letters on the window titles, and so on. Thus most of softwares are useless so far. Therefore, we cannot choose softwares in the viewpoint of personal preference but we have to choose softwares only because these softwares can handle our native languages.
In such world where we can use a limited subset of free softwares, there were a few remarkable softwares released this year. Vim 6.0 with multibyte encodings support (Unicode is one of such encodings), Emacs21 with locale (LC_CTYPE) sensibility, and so on.
I hope in the end of next year the "subset" of softwares which can handle multibyte characters will be increased considerably and I will be able to join this type of discussion!
This will be true only in ISO-8859-1 (or ISO-8859-15 with Euro) world or at least 8bit simple encodings world.
For other billions of people (Chinese, Indian, Arab, and so on), Linux desktop (with XFree86, GNOME, and KDE) is far from usable for average people.
In other words, there are still remaining large market for such billions of people.
Do we still need wsetfont, a small utility to configure fonts for various languages?
Since font specification of Window Maker is based on Latin-1 and not internationalized, non-Latin-1 people need to invoke wsetfont to display our native language on the window titles.
I tried to write a patch, like I wrote a patch for TWM, Sawfish, IceWM, and so on. (Thus, all we need to do is to set locale [i.e., LANG, LC_CTYPE, or LC_ALL variable] for these window managers to handle i18n characters.) However, it was difficult to write a patch because Window Maker is made from two parts of core and widgets. I had no idea how to communicate the mode (XFontStruct mode or XFontSet mode) between the core and widgets. Are there anyone who are willing to try this problem?
(I wonder how many non-Latin-1 people live in the Slashdot community.)
Electric "disks" (such as memory device) are always researched in order to replace mechanical disks. The biggest problem is the cost. If this problem would be solved, "disks" (it would not be disk-shaped) would be drastically faster than today's disks.
If markup languages such as XML will substitute proprietary binary formats like MS Word and so on, it will be very nice!
I think one of difficulties of voice recognition is like handwriting recognition; it is *very* different between languages.
European languages (such as English, French, German, Italian, Spanish,...) are rather similar one another. However, the world is far larger. The number of vowels and consonants are very different between languages (European, east Asian, south-east Asian, Arab,...).
I mentioned that because I didn't know how Miyazaki anime is popular in countries other than Japan. Thus I thought that it is natural that non-Japanese people don't know how Miyazaki anime is popular in Japan.
FYI: Disney anime movies are also very popular in Japan, though I feel they are a little less popular than Miyazaki anime. It is only my feeling, not statistics.
Why do you think Japanese people hate other ethnic groups?
Sure, saying "all animes are good/bad" is just like saying "all novels are good/bad" or "all movies are good/bad".
I heard that Harry Potter is banned. How about the Kiki's Delivery Service? "Conservative Christians" may also hate Totoro.
I like Miyazaki anime very much. However, in Japan, Miyazaki anime is not only for otaku people but also for all average children and adults. Miyazaki's anime movies earn as much as Holywood movies in Japan.