off topic

Fri Apr 28 08:26:46 UTC 2006

On Fri, 2006-28-04 at 14:14 +0700, Chanchao wrote:

> > Linux could replace Window$ servers, but not the multi-lingual and
> > games desktop.

> Why not multi-lingual?  I think Ubuntu supports more languages than
> Windows?  Like, there currently isn't a Thai language version of Windows
> XP where everything is translated to Thai. 

One of the differences is the degree of support.  If a language is
supported under Windows, it's usually quite well-supported.  Using
Chinese, however, as an example, the support provided by Ubuntu (Breezy)
is pathetic out of the box.  If you stick to the official software, you
have crappy screen fonts (I mean really horrible-looking ones!),
translated help and menus for OpenOffice and for GNOME, and that's about
it.  Note that actually entering Chinese text?  Isn't there.

Now if you have the patience you can download SCIM, figure out which of
its umpteen modules actually work (together) and get something that
supports Chinese entry.  It's undocumented, mostly, which makes figuring
out how to use it less than easy, but at least it's there.  Of course to
get it you have to switch to the unsupported software (which would
explain the difficulty of use, et al).

Compare this with either Windows XP's Chinese edition or the MUI with
Chinese.  Let's use the latter since that's what's on my wife's
computer.  I want English?  I log in on my account and everything's in
English.  My wife logs in?  She gets Chinese (Simplified).  With fonts
that at least don't hurt the eyes when used.  ;)  I want to enter
Chinese on my side?  Easy as pie -- and I have about fifteen different
input systems to choose from.  (I have the Microsoft Office MUI as well
-- I don't remember which one supplied which IME.)  All of them work
about as you'd expect and there's only one icon for it on the toolbar.
(SCIM provides one IME icon for each window that can use it -- and then
doesn't tell you which one controls which application!  You learn the
Magic Incantations<tm> or you get used to trial and error.)  Every input
method editor has online help available to tell you how to customise it,
how to use it, etc.  

And the Microsoft Pinyin 3.0 IME is actually very impressive -- it takes
the place of about three or four other IMEs (straight Pinyin, smart
Pinyin, double-pinyin, fuzzy pinyin, etc.) and is straightforward to
configure and use.  Compare this with SCIM's Ziranma input which has no
documentation, so I have no idea how to even begin to use it short of
doing trial and error on every conceivable key combination.

Windows also supports differing standards quite well.  Wubi-86 and
Wubi-98, for example.  My wife learned and uses Wubi-86.  SCIM's Wubi
support is apparently only Wubi-98.  There's no options to switch it to
the 86 standard.  Again more gnashing of teeth and switching over to
Windows.

There's more to language support than translating menus, in the end.  A
whole lot more.  And while Breezy can do it, provided you open the right
repositories, the support that comes out looks ugly, isn't particularly
intuitive and is largely undocumented.  And what I've been seeing on the
topic from Dapper looks like they really only settled the difficulties
of downloading and configuring.  It still doesn't look particularly nice
and it still isn't very documented.

Me, that's not too much of a problem.  I'm quite adaptable to differing
input systems -- just like I'm pretty much neutral on the editor wars
(except for emacs, which I can live without quite handily ;)).  Others,
however, and by "others" I mean "most people" or even "sane people" like
just a wee bit more than any Linux distro (outside of possibly Red Flag)
can offer.

> For games, I would agree. :)   I actually seriously wonder what the
> selection criteria were for the games that come with Ubuntu..  >:)

Intense boredom?  :D

--
Michael T. Richter
Email: ttmrichter at gmail.com, mtr1966 at hotpop.com
MSN: ttmrichter at hotmail.com, mtr1966 at hotmail.com; YIM:
michael_richter_1966; AIM: YanJiahua1966; ICQ: 241960658; Jabber:
mtr1966 at jabber.cn

"I have never seen the poor people being so familiar with their heads of
state as they were with [Michele Duvalier]. It was a beautiful lesson
for me. I've learned something from it." --Mother Theresa
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