Re: POSIX locales and Roman Numerals

From: Tex Texin (texin@progress.com)
Date: Mon Jun 28 1999 - 01:36:01 EDT


> > We are just calling a spade a spade. Until the US starts showing more
> > respect for conventions not its own, what you term "US bashing" will
> > be necessary.

Funny thing is, I spend a lot of my time shopping for international
software that I can
recommend to my international or multinational customers, and I don't
see software coming
from any other country that is generally international either.

What I do see is that most companies go after revenue in markets based
on their potential. Don't blame the U.S. if the biggest market is
English and many
US companies are either satisfied with that opportunity, of find all
their resources consumed
by competing in the one market.

In Europe, proximity increases the potentiality of non-English products.
And from my investigations, I believe Scandanavians tend to market first
to other Scandanavians,
West Europeans first to other West Europeans, and East Europeans first
to East Europeans and not
always tending to be fully international out of respect for other
cultures.
To be sure difficulties with codepages, fonts, and
other factors, are inhibiting. Let's stop pretending and certainly stop
the "I'm better
than you" attitudes, that claim its either American arrogance
or ignorance that causes Americans to write software for English
markets.
It's just economics.

Go ask the software purchasers in Asia or the Middle East, which
countries (other than
their own) are generally
producing software for their markets to substantiate the holier than
thou attitudes.
You find more American produced software there, then from other markets.

Now, let's go back to discussing standards in a more productive way.

-- 
We've heard that a million monkeys at a million keyboards could produce 
the Complete Works of Shakespeare; now, thanks to the Internet, we know 
this is not true. -Robert Wilensky
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Tex Texin                      Director, International Products
                                 
Progress Software Corp.        Voice:         +1-781-280-4271
14 Oak Park                      Fax:         +1-781-280-4949
Bedford, MA 01730  USA             texin@bedford.progress.com

http://www.progress.com http://apptivity.progress.com -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------



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