3 ms·

>For example, instead of trying to do advanced font rendering for almost every single language and writing style known to man, why not just limit yourself to AS

>For example, instead of trying to do advanced font rendering for almost every single language and writing style known to man, why not just limit yourself to ASCII, left to right typing and monospaced bitmap fonts in certain devices? That works wonderful if you never deal with peoples names and have no interest in making your device available in France, Germany (65 million and 80 million people), or Japan (100+). That is leaving a lot of money on the table.

KronisLV 5y ago
> That works wonderful if you never deal with peoples names and have no interest in making your device available in France, Germany (65 million and 80 million people), or Japan (100+). That is leaving a lot of money on the table. That is a valid point, but i'm thinking more along the lines of smart IoT devices and other embedded settings and there indeed you'll find that localizing your device is sometimes unprofitable and doesn't provide much value at all. Consider why almost all of the popular programming languages use keywords in English? Because it's largely become the lingua franca of the industry. On a similar note, i'd argue that making your smart thermostat output kanji or text in german would actually be more problematic, because anyone who'd end up with the device and wouldn't know how to change the language (provided you even can change it, instead of regional skews) and would not speak those languages would find it useless, rather than someone from the aforementioned cultures, who's more likely to know at least some English. To that end, i believe that it's possible to make devices available in France, Germany, Japan and elsewhere even if you don't localize them in the local languages there. Of course, your market penetration might be lower than when going the extra mile, though you should really consider whether it's worth it. Furthermore, it's not like the situation with names would be utterly hopeless - romanization of names is definitely possible and limiting yourself to just ASCII actually makes your code simpler in many cases, which has historically been one of the reasons for various other systems becoming confused with Unicode and breaking in disappointing ways. Of course, i'm speaking from my subjective experience - living in a country with a few million inhabitants, i'm always using software that's in English. When it's localized in my country's official language, i look for ways to change it back into English, because the localized terms sound weird, the translations are often either badly made, or just feel uncomfortable. This is especially true in software tools like GIMP or Inkscape, because using a non-standard language ensures that you won't be able to browse help forums or the documentation, because almost always not all of it will be translated, or the menu items and nested paths will sound so different that it will be impossible to find what you're looking for. The same applies to hardware in my eyes. That said, there's probably a world of difference between a thermostat and a smartphone.

KronisLV 5y ago

> That works wonderful if you never deal with peoples names and have no interest in making your device available in France, Germany (65 million and 80 million people), or Japan (100+). That is leaving a lot of money on the table. That is a valid point, but i'm thinking more along the lines of smart IoT devices and other embedded settings and there indeed you'll find that localizing your device is sometimes unprofitable and doesn't provide much value at all. Consider why almost all of the popular programming languages use keywords in English? Because it's largely become the lingua franca of the industry. On a similar note, i'd argue that making your smart thermostat output kanji or text in german would actually be more problematic, because anyone who'd end up with the device and wouldn't know how to change the language (provided you even can change it, instead of regional skews) and would not speak those languages would find it useless, rather than someone from the aforementioned cultures, who's more likely to know at least some English. To that end, i believe that it's possible to make devices available in France, Germany, Japan and elsewhere even if you don't localize them in the local languages there. Of course, your market penetration might be lower than when going the extra mile, though you should really consider whether it's worth it. Furthermore, it's not like the situation with names would be utterly hopeless - romanization of names is definitely possible and limiting yourself to just ASCII actually makes your code simpler in many cases, which has historically been one of the reasons for various other systems becoming confused with Unicode and breaking in disappointing ways. Of course, i'm speaking from my subjective experience - living in a country with a few million inhabitants, i'm always using software that's in English. When it's localized in my country's official language, i look for ways to change it back into English, because the localized terms sound weird, the translations are often either badly made, or just feel uncomfortable. This is especially true in software tools like GIMP or Inkscape, because using a non-standard language ensures that you won't be able to browse help forums or the documentation, because almost always not all of it will be translated, or the menu items and nested paths will sound so different that it will be impossible to find what you're looking for. The same applies to hardware in my eyes. That said, there's probably a world of difference between a thermostat and a smartphone.