Re: dynamic language switching

Hello Erik - Let me use Martin Bryan's message to answer you, because
he mentions a specific point that is also nagging me repeatedly.

My history of dealing with on-the-fly language switching is that I
implemented it before actually thinking about its use :-). The reason
for this is that I am working with a very flexible framework that
allowed to implement it with only marginally more work than for a
more static solution, and that it was therefore a good thing to
show the advantage of using frameworks and OO techniques for
internationalization. Whoever is interested in the details can
read my paper at the 8th Unicode conference (Hong Kong 1996),
entitled "Localization in the UNET++ Application Framework".

After having done the implementation, I started to think about
what I would have to say if somebody commented as this being
a nice demo feature but without much real value. I came up
with cases similar to the ones that have been mentioned by
other people on the list. In these situations, this feature
has a serious tangible value.
To tell you whether it is worth implementing it, I would
probably have to see your code, but if your code looks
so that it would be too much effort to implement it,
that might be a sign that you should start to clean
it up anyway :-).

>Let me give you just one example. I have to go to Luxembourg from time to
>time to consult with my boss. While I am there I need to look up reference
>material on the Internet on either his machine or his secretary's machine.
>He is a German, his secretary is French. He has a German Qwertz keyboard and
>a version of Netscape configured for German messages. She has a French
>Azerty keyboard and a version of Netscape configured for French messages.
>Whilst I can, as I know most of the message types and menu positions, manage
>to decode the messages and menu options into English I still have to look at
>the keyboard before typing. What I would ideally like to be able to do is
>to, simply, change the configuration to English to get English messages
>using touch typing as if I was using the English Qwerty keyboard I use at
>home to access the net.

The keyboard is definitely an issue. I use the DVORAK keyboard for all
my typing (one of the reasons I write that much email), and it would
be extremely helpful if I could just take my keyboard configuration
with me and use it wherever I go.


Regards,	Martin.

Received on Tuesday, 26 November 1996 07:14:17 UTC