Re: Japanese input (was RE: tlug: Japanese)

["Jonathan Byrne" <jpmag@example.com>]

-----Original Message-----
From: Kazuyuki Okamoto <ikko-@example.com>

>To make standard is difficult.


I'm not saying it would be easy.  In fact, I said it would
be essentially impossible.  I do say that it would be a very
desirable situation if it could be achieved.  The problem
with cooperative development isn't that it fails to develop
good software; it develops a lot of high quality software.
We all have free software that is more stable and does what
it was advertised to do better than commercial software that
we paid money for and run on some other platforms.

Rather, the problem with the cooperative development model
is that in cases such as Japanese input systems under Linux,
it developed *too much* software, where it should have been
developing a standard.  Looking at the very big picture, we
can call instances such as that Non-Cooperative Development.
That is, developers came out with these different Japanese
input systems independently of each other, when they should
have been cooperating with each other to come out with a
unified standard that anyone who wanted to could then write
software for.  If developer A and developer B then both
wrote Japanese input systems that conformed to the standard,
but developer B's was faster, more stable, etc., most people
would use it.  But whichever one you used, your
Japanese-aware applications would work with it because it
conformed to the standard.

Cooperative development is very good at producing
high-quality Open Source software.  Unfortunately, however,
it sometimes fails at producing standards in areas that
would benefit from them.  In the area of Japanese input, the
proprietary (non-Unix) OS vendors have succeeded far better.
Japanese (and other double-byte language support) under all
of them is better and simpler than it is under Linux,
particularly on MacOS.  Apple's language kits are a trick
that Microsoft hasn't picked up on yet, although their
localization efforts are fine.  It's the Japanese support
more than anything that keeps me using Windows for some
things, whether I really want to or not.

But I'm happy that Linux has come to a point, and I have
come to a point with Linux, where I can use it for a lot of
things, and do.  The things I use Windows for now generally
fall into two categories: 1) Things that aren't supported
under Linux right now at all (this is usually in the form of
an application that isn't available), and 2) Things that are
supported under Linux, but not well.

I have great expectations for Linux in the year ahead,
though.  Great strides have been made in the 9 months or so
since I first tried it, and I think that in June of 1999
many of today's areas of difficulty will have gone away or
made substantial improvements.  There was certainly a time
when I thought I would never get to like Linux, but I've
found the longer I use it, the more I like it.

Cheers,

Jonathan

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