In a message dated 2001-09-27 1:52:27 AM, cg at cdegroot.com writes:

-><Fleeberz at aol.com> said:
->Oh, and complaining that the English-only interface is a hindrance,
->well, Computerchannel.de is German-only, but I was still able to
->figure out what they were talking about.

>What a dumb remark. They're talking about kids here, and I can assure
>you that the average kid's English outside the US or UK is by far not
>enough to use Squeak. If Squeak aims to be something for kids, it needs
>to be internationalized. 

What an absolute moron I was for failing to consider the considerable focus 
of the Squeak community regarding the Children of the World.
Obviously, I must have taken the "English-only" complaint out of context, 
thinking that the *reviewer*, rather than the *potential user* could have 
tried harder to make sense of the (currently) English-centric implementation.

Speaking of dumbness, I guess you'll just have to take that up with the 
fool(s) who haven't internationalised Squeak yet - after all, why should they 
even suggest the possibility of children using the thing unless the menus can 
easily be set to display in Farsi or Erzya, never mind the absurdity of 
English-named classes, methods, and all that.

We've supported Unicode for some time now, right? And what about the blind 
Gagauzian-speaking kids? Is the text-to-speech functionality unfairly biased 
against them?

My point is that I, being a stupid English-speaking American, having no 
fluency whatsoever in any but my native language, had never before attempted 
to read "foreign" information on Squeak, because of the abundance of English 
material available which is so much more understandable to me. I falsely 
believed that Squeak was continuing to evolve, and wasn't expected to be 
everything to everyone all at once.

The astute reviewer rightly criticized Squeak for failing to have evolved 
sufficiently for a global audience of adults, let alone children. Surely, had 
I an iota of a clue, I would have realized that the important thing to do 
regarding this matter would be to complain about an inadequate localization 
framework - too bad I missed that chance.

Shame on you, Cees, for chastising me for my obvious ignorance. My respect 
for you has been betrayed; I would have expected you "Germanize" Squeak 
instead, if that's what it's begging for, and perhaps write some 
comprehensible on-line tutorials as well.

If anyone needs tutorials that a 9- or 10-year-old could understand, it's me. 
I can't afford the ridiculous price of the Squeak (Smalltalk...) books, and 
from what I read on this list, that's the only way to ever figure it out. You 
and others can spend hundreds (thousands?) of dollars to fly around and chat 
with other OOP aficionados, I can't. That's what makes you better than me. I 
am happy for you.

Keep on Squeakin'
--Flee

Never meddle in the affairs of idiots, it makes them soggy and hard to light.