D20N?

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Norman Diamond - 13 Nov 2007 08:51 GMT

What do you call it when your version of Visual Studio promises not to
support its own language, promises not to support most other countries'
languages, and promises only 7-bit clean ASCII? Although such an
environment is very useful when coding device drivers and maybe some other
specialized projects, I have to wonder about the general case. Should we
call this deinternationalization? D20N for short?

First, an example which isn't 7-bit clean, which supports 3 foreign
languages but not Japanese:
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/ja-jp/library/y99d1cd3(VS.80).aspx
* 10. F5 キーを押すか、または [デバッグ] メニューの [開始] を
* クリックします。
* オペレーティングシステムの UI 言語に応じて、英語、フランス語、
* またはドイツ語のあいさつがダイアログボックスに表示されます。
(Press the F5 key or click the "Debug" menu "Start" entry. Depending on the
operating system's UI language, an English, French, or German greeting will
be displayed in the dialog box.)

Next, how to really restrict developers to a single foreign language:
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/ja-jp/library/7k989cfy(VS.80).aspx
* バイナリエディタを使用すると、.resx ファイルを含むリソースファイル
* を、16 進形式または ASCII 形式のバイナリレベルで編集できます。
(If you use the binary editor, you can edit resource files including .resx
files in hexadecimal or ASCII.)
Fortunately Visual Studio 2005 didn't obey this one. It displayed resources
in either Shift-JIS or Unicode, I'm not sure which.

Now, I'm really glad that Visual Studio 2005 supports its own language.
This beats some Win32 APIs. But MSDN's promises of D20N started out looking
pretty discouraging.

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Michael S. Kaplan [MSFT] - 22 Nov 2007 18:43 GMT

Hmmmm.

It is apparently awful that MSDN has committed such terrible crimes as:

1) providing multilingual samples, and
2) providing translations if their content into languages like Japanese

Although in the process of committing these terrible crimes they allow
Norman Diamond (who we could call N12D if we include the space there!) to
accuse Microsoft of doing terrible things like describing in Japanese
samples that were not written in Japanese, therefore proving terrible things
of some sort.

Most impressive here? The power of sarcasm that N12D wields is not to be
trifled with.

OTOH I guess I can do it too. :-)

Signature

MichKa [Microsoft]
Fundamentals Technical Lead
Windows International
Blog: http://blogs.msdn.com/michkap

This posting is provided "AS IS" with
no warranties, and confers no rights.

> What do you call it when your version of Visual Studio promises not to
> support its own language, promises not to support most other countries'
[quoted text clipped - 30 lines]
> looking
> pretty discouraging.

Reply to this Message

Norman Diamond - 26 Nov 2007 00:47 GMT

I looked back at my original posting before it was quoted by Microsoft's
software. My original posting did not have long strings of question marks.

Even in a Japanese encoded posting that quoted a Japanese encoded posting,
Japanese text turned into long strings of question marks. More D20N at
work.

P.S. I agree, since Microsoft doesn't really want to sell working versions
of Japanese software or documentation, Microsoft should not do so. Let most
of the world's market be addressed by software makers who want to address
most of the world's market.

> Hmmmm.
>
[quoted text clipped - 50 lines]
>> looking
>> pretty discouraging.

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Norman Diamond - 27 Nov 2007 09:33 GMT

Here's more.
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/930135

> Windows Vista では、ファイル名に国際的な文字が含まれている
> ガジェットをインストールできません。たとえば、ファイル名に日本語
> または中国語の文字が含まれているガジェットをインストールできません。

Microsoft says in Japanese that if a filename contains Japanese characters
then the gadget can't be installed.

It's fine with me if Microsoft doesn't want its Japanese products to work.
The problem is that refunds are overdue.

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