ASCII is good enough for us so it is good enough for everyone



  • My company sells software around the world for years (probably decades) so I really don't understand one problem we have over and over again. Two or three years ago, all the big Asian clients started complaining about poor local-lanuage support - as in "we want a mulit-million dollar refund for even looking at this crap, you bastard" type complaints. So now, QA teams have bene created, testing labs setup, and lots of man hours are being spent trying to nail these issues down.

    So, I am helping out with testing the brand-new, built from scratch, Web 2.0-but-better, we-are-going-to-kick-ass, almost-ready-to-sell, betting-the-future-of-the-company product and I copy and paste in some Japanese characters and get question marks... Korean... question marks... Russian... question marks... Not again!

    After I open a bug report, it get linked to an existing ticket about lack of Greek character support which is nine months old! I guess the whole QA/QC/QE testing idea is only for after a customer complains about it



  • Out of curiocity what language is this app written in?



  • Sounds a lot like our products. We used to support english/ascii only (anything over 127 was an underscore). Now however we have taken the brave new step of supporting latin-1 (iso8859-1 I think it's called) for characters > 127 && <= 255 which means we now support "95% of languages, which is good enough.". Apparently, we would need to purchase fonts for other languages, and thats "impractical for 5% of the world". 

    I guessing this is more common than I thought. 

    Also, it's important you don't forget the standard management rule. It's all about time to market - "Ship first, use customers as guinea pigs, fix what they complain about in the next version, which will be released exactly 1 week after the standard support package expires." 



  • @DOA said:

    Out of curiocity what language is this app written in?


    Pretty sure it is in English, based the parts I have seen. I don't have full access so I can't be sure but...


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @Ex-Navy Dude said:

    @DOA said:

    Out of curiocity what language is this app written in?


    Pretty sure it is in English, based the parts I have seen. I don't have full access so I can't be sure but...



  • @PJH said:

    @Ex-Navy Dude said:
    @DOA said:

    Out of curiocity what language is this app written in?


    Pretty sure it is in English, based the parts I have seen. I don't have full access so I can't be sure but...
    picard-facepalm.jpg

    For extra fun, I just found out that we fully translated resource files for 30+ languages but about 20%-30% of the forms seem to use hard coded values instead of the resource files.



  • @Mole said:

    we now support "95% of languages, which is good enough."

    Yup, brought by the "everyone in the world" = "everyone I know personally" mindset (note the single equal sign). I had a boss (several levels of mgmt above) like that once: "Why, everyone in the world uses $language_spoken_by_27_million_people_worldwide, no need to support any characters beyond Latin-1; now if only the Romanians and the Brazilians and the Czechs would stop using those weird accents - what the hell is wrong with those people? And don't get me started on the Russians, thinking themselves too good for ASCII!" My guess is he believed that all people are fluent in his native language, but some of them are using foreign languages just to mess with him.



  • @Ex-Navy Dude said:

    For extra fun, I just found out that we fully translated resource files for 30+ languages but about 20%-30% of the forms seem to use hard coded values instead of the resource files.
     




  • "Our resource files don't support Unicode, so we just hardcode string needed in the form and make them invisible for every other language"

     I wonder if thats why when I'm reading a PDF created by a UK company written in 100% English, I get asked to install the Japanese fonts? 

     



  • @Ex-Navy Dude said:

    @PJH said:
    @Ex-Navy Dude said:
    @DOA said:

    Out of curiocity what language is this app written in?

    Pretty sure it is in English, based the parts I have seen. I don't have full access so I can't be sure but...
    picard-facepalm.jpg
    For extra fun, I just found out that we fully translated resource files for 30+ languages but about 20%-30% of the forms seem to use hard coded values instead of the resource files.
     

    Hey there. Just a heads up. But this is a programming forum. Often when people ask "what language" they mean programming language. Just trying to be friendly.



  • Don't forget to add support for elvish Cwenya.

    I am pretty sure that an old form of English used accents for stress marking on words, and that can still be seen as when you write words of foreign origin (such as "resumé", or "fiancé").



  •  @stratos said:

    Hey there. Just a heads up. But this is a programming forum. Often when people ask "what language" they mean programming language. Just trying to be friendly.

    Or, considering the topic is about foreign languages, we could be talking about languages which are nothing to with the programming kind. Just a heads up :)

    And on that note, I want support for Hebrew. Most people seem to ignore that one as it's weird characters, right to left reading and trying to find someone to translate is a complete bitch. 



  • @Mole said:

     @stratos said:

    Hey there. Just a heads up. But this is a programming forum. Often when people ask "what language" they mean programming language. Just trying to be friendly.

    Or, considering the topic is about foreign languages, we could be talking about languages which are nothing to with the programming kind. Just a heads up :)

    And on that note, I want support for Hebrew. Most people seem to ignore that one as it's weird characters, right to left reading and trying to find someone to translate is a complete bitch. 

     

    When people ask "Out of curiocity what language is this app written in?" the correct answer is not "english".

     

     



  • @stratos said:

    @Mole said:

     @stratos said:

    Hey there. Just a heads up. But this is a programming forum. Often when people ask "what language" they mean programming language. Just trying to be friendly.

    Or, considering the topic is about foreign languages, we could be talking about languages which are nothing to with the programming kind. Just a heads up :)

    And on that note, I want support for Hebrew. Most people seem to ignore that one as it's weird characters, right to left reading and trying to find someone to translate is a complete bitch. 

     

    When people ask "Out of curiocity what language is this app written in?" the correct answer is not "english".

     

     

    But VB is Eng ... wait. Nevermind.

     



  • [quote user="Renan "C#" Sousa"]

    Don't forget to add support for elvish Cwenya.

    I am pretty sure that an old form of English used accents for stress marking on words, and that can still be seen as when you write words of foreign origin (such as "resumé", or "fiancé").

    [/quote]

    Those accents are inherited from French--the accent égout isn't about stress, it's about sound. "Resume" is pronounced "ree-zoom", "resumë", if such a word existed, would be "ree-zoom-uh", and "resumé" is "re-zoom-ay".

    The only thing like a diacritical to exist natively in English is a diaeresis, which just indicates that a vowel is to be pronounced separately (not silent or in a dipthong). The most famous is probably on the end of Brontë (which is supposed to be pronounced "bron-tee", not "bron-tay"). The New Yorker spells "cooperate" "coöperate", which is correct, just pretentious.



  • @Mole said:

    And on that note, I want support for Hebrew. Most people seem to ignore that one as it's weird characters, right to left reading and trying to find someone to translate is a complete bitch. 

     

    Especially on Saturday.



  • @stratos said:

    When people ask "Out of curiocity what language is this app written in?" the correct answer is not "english".

    Italian?



  •  Saying that, why don't compilers support Unicode comments? Why must comments be in ascii? In this day and age compilers should support full unicode! I don't want to type 'while', I want to type 'während' ! 

     



  • @blakeyrat said:

    @stratos said:
    When people ask "Out of curiocity what language is this app written in?" the correct answer is not "english".

    Italian?

     

    French!

    Goddamn the French.



  • @Mole said:

    Saying that, why don't compilers support Unicode comments? Why must comments be in ascii? In this day and age compilers should support full unicode! I don't want to type 'while', I want to type 'während' ! 

     

    PHP 6 (which is dead now) would have supported that in its interpreter. If it would have been finnished you could have had chinese word variable, class and method names if you'd liked.



  • @stratos said:

    Hey there. Just a heads up. But this is a programming forum. Often when people ask "what language" they mean programming language. Just trying to be friendly.


    Okay... I am TRWTF for my reply. God, I feel stupid...



  • @Mole said:

     Saying that, why don't compilers support Unicode comments? Why must comments be in ascii? In this day and age compilers should support full unicode! I don't want to type 'while', I want to type 'während' ! 

     

    .NET has full unicode support, hell you can even use unicode characters for class/variable/method names.

    class あ
    {
        static void Main()
        {
            System.Console.Write("あ");
        }
    }

    Is a perfectly valid .NET application.


  • @zblongladder said:

    [quote user="Renan "C#" Sousa"]

    Don't forget to add support for elvish Cwenya.

    I am pretty sure that an old form of English used accents for stress marking on words, and that can still be seen as when you write words of foreign origin (such as "resumé", or "fiancé").

    Those accents are inherited from French--the accent égout isn't about stress, it's about sound. "Resume" is pronounced "ree-zoom", "resumë", if such a word existed, would be "ree-zoom-uh", and "resumé" is "re-zoom-ay".

    [/quote] égout means sewer. The word you're looking for is "accent aigu".

    Fun fact, the word "aigu" is also an exception. The feminine version is written "aiguë", which is pronounced "eeg-yoo" - if the "tréma" sign were missing (e.g. aigue), you'd pronounce it "eegh".

     



  • @XIU said:

    you can even use unicode characters for class/variable/method names
    Why, god, why?!

    You know some retard is going to start using hebrew or japanese or the dead dialect his grandma spoke in her tiny village in the Himalayas



  • @DOA said:

    @XIU said:

    you can even use unicode characters for class/variable/method names
    Why, god, why?!

    You know some retard is going to start using hebrew or japanese or the dead dialect his grandma spoke in her tiny village in the Himalayas

    More than that, people who don't know those languages are going to use the funny characters because some of them look cute.



  • @DOA said:

    @XIU said:

    you can even use unicode characters for class/variable/method names
    Why, god, why?!

    You know some retard is going to start using hebrew or japanese or the dead dialect his grandma spoke in her tiny village in the Himalayas

    So kick his ass at his code reviews. Just like you would if he named all his variables "woobleweezlewobble45522"

    I'm thinking you have to really stretch to call this a bad feature...



  • @blakeyrat said:

    @DOA said:
    @XIU said:
    you can even use unicode characters for class/variable/method names
    Why, god, why?!

    You know some retard is going to start using hebrew or japanese or the dead dialect his grandma spoke in her tiny village in the Himalayas

    So kick his ass at his code reviews. Just like you would if he named all his variables "woobleweezlewobble45522"

    Well... yes, but you are assuming that a) I'll have the seniority, b) work for a company who doesn't think of code reviews as "those uncomfortable meetings the new guy wants to do" and c) I'll catch this as it's being written, not inherit it from someone's nephew or from some third party code the boss bought because it has shiny buttons.



  • @DOA said:

    Well... yes, but you are assuming that a) I'll have the seniority, b) work for a company who doesn't think of code reviews as "those uncomfortable meetings the new guy wants to do" and c) I'll catch this as it's being written, not inherit it from someone's nephew or from some third party code the boss bought because it has shiny buttons.

    Ok, then ignore the code review idea. Let me put it this way:

    How do you cope now when someone uses a shitty variable name? And how does unicode support change that? Just do whatever you already do!

    Adding unicode support doesn't make shitty variables any easier or harder to deal with. Just different. That was my point.



  • @blakeyrat said:

    Ok, then ignore the code review idea. Let me put it this way:

    How do you cope now when someone uses a shitty variable name? And how does unicode support change that? Just do whatever you already do!

    Adding unicode support doesn't make shitty variables any easier or harder to deal with. Just different. That was my point.

     

    +1



  • @blakeyrat said:

    @stratos said:
    When people ask "Out of curiocity what language is this app written in?" the correct answer is not "english".
    Italian?
     

     

    profanity?



  • @blakeyrat said:

    @DOA said:
    Well... yes, but you are assuming that a) I'll have the seniority, b) work for a company who doesn't think of code reviews as "those uncomfortable meetings the new guy wants to do" and c) I'll catch this as it's being written, not inherit it from someone's nephew or from some third party code the boss bought because it has shiny buttons.

    Ok, then ignore the code review idea. Let me put it this way:

    How do you cope now when someone uses a shitty variable name? And how does unicode support change that? Just do whatever you already do!

    Adding unicode support doesn't make shitty variables any easier or harder to deal with. Just different. That was my point.

     

    I would think it's a moot feature. I can not see any case in which I would find it Ok to use non-ascii characters for a variable name, class name or otherwise. But I am not opposed to it being possible, there are thousands of other ways people can fuck up code, at least with variable names it's just right-click->rename to correct the mess (in any decent IDE that will find all other references in scope and rename those too).

     



  • @stratos said:

    When people ask "Out of curiocity what language is this app written in?" the correct answer is not "english".
    When people ask that in English, they should know enough to say, "Out of curiosity, in what language is this written?"



  • @blakeyrat said:

    @stratos said:
    When people ask "Out of curiocity what language is this app written in?" the correct answer is not "english".

    Italian?

    I think maybe he meant that English should be capitalized when it refers to the English language.


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