26 Mar
1999
26 Mar
'99
5:37 p.m.
Just changing the user-visible string in an app is the usual way to go for multi-lingual applications. I was once teaching Scheme to some Japanese-speaking clients (with the help of a translator -- aargh) I showed them VisualWorks... particularly that they could use kanji for methods, variables, etc, without the compiler barfing. They seemed surprised.
Still, even within an English speaking community of programmers, it seems difficult (boring/not done) to actually get a *lot* of consistency amongst Smalltalk developers on interfaces/message-semantics. Huzzah to X3J20 for even trying. Perhaps this is the price we pay for dynamic typing.
Like VW, dynamic typing is expensive, but worth it :-)
-- Mike
mklein@alumni.caltech.edu