Re: tlug: Japanese filenames (was: EUC & SJIS)

["Stephen J. Turnbull" <turnbull@example.com>]

Karl-Max, you have talent!  It certainly keeps me amused.  :-)

    Rex> On Thu, Sep 10, 1998 at 01:29:13PM +0000, Karl-Max Wagner
    Rex> wrote:

    Rex> Permitting as recent an invention as the computer to modify
    Rex> the way we speak and write to one another is as offensive to
    Rex> me as, say, forcing everyone in the world to sit in those
    Rex> horrid knee-chairs (or whatever those stupid contraptions

You mean the ones that made my lower back pain disappear?

    Rex> that were mildly popular a few years ago were called) because
    Rex> they are easier to make!  Computers work for us, not the
    Rex> other way around.

And that goes double for the bloody French Academy.  No?  :-)

    Rex> I mention all this because I contend that it is a greater
    Rex> imposition to your average Japanese (say) to force him to use
    Rex> English filenames than it is to your average German (though I
    Rex> find it abhorrent for either).

But that's partly due to the fact that despite 50 years of
"kampe-n"ing for "kokusaika", the typical Japanese is as interested in 
things international as a middle school student in Kansas.  Germans
live kokusaika.  Japanese create ghettos everywhere they go.  (Not by
personal choice, but by educational necessity.)

Even in their program code.  :-(

So I don't think you should depend on "relative imposition", a lot of
it is self-abuse.  To whit:

    Rex> "Proving" the same point from the other direction: if you put
    Rex> me in front of a German keyboard, I'll mistype a few "Z"s.
    Rex> Put me in front of a Japanese keyboard (which is really an
    Rex> "Roman" keyboard for phoneticizing Japanese -- but that's
    Rex> beside the point) and I start climbing the walls (extra keys,
    Rex> misplaced keys, resized keys, AARGH!).

And that goes quadruple for the bakageta JIS.  That keyboard was
designed and apparently mandated by the same people who brought us
Tsukuba-dai classroom furniture that makes all the volleyball middle
blockers look like frogs, with their knees wrapped around their
earlobes.

>>>>> "jb" == Jonathan Byrne <jq@example.com> writes:

    jb> On Thu, 10 Sep 1998, Karl-Max Wagner wrote:

    >> Let's face it. English is a de facto standard in everything
    >> that smacks technology. We can be sure that everybody using
    >> computers has a good working knowledge of it.

    jb> That is a completely unwarranted assumption.

Not according to Monbusho.  FUD wo yamete kudasai. ;-)

    jb> Those Japanese programmers you criticized for putting only
    jb> Japanese comments in their code may well have been
    jb> monolingual.  There are many people who use computers,
    jb> including those who program them or do network admin, etc.,
    jb> who read little or no English and speak none at all. I know
    jb> quite a few of them.

In any case, in the only large sample of code with Japanese comments
that I know well (Mule 2.3), you're usually better off if you can't
read the comments :-(

This is partially due to the fact that much of the _code_ was later
edited by people not competent to edit Japanese _comments_, I think.

    >> start with Kanji filenames on a Japanese server and a Frechman
    >> wants to download a file. Well, he could as well buy himself a
    >> rope.

    jb> Is this meant to imply that French people can't read Japanese?
    jb> The only two of them I've met over here were very good.
    jb> Moreover, why would a person who couldn't read Japanese want
    jb> to download a file that was in Japanese anyway?

Because the background image is a naked girl.  What did you think?

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