Re: Editor Priorities
Hi,
At Wed, 8 May 2002 21:07:32 -0500,
Steve Langasek wrote:
> For once, I believe the need for multibyte support has been overstated.
> The tasks for which it is *most* important to provide a sane default
> editor -- such as editing per-user or system config files, most of which
> are in ASCII and commented in English by default -- don't require a
> Unicode-enabled or bidi-capable editor. And, those tasks where users
> are most likely to need/want international input are those areas where
> the user is most likely to be using a custom editor setting ($EDITOR,
> $VISUAL, or calling the editor by name).
It means that Debian will force *all* CJK (bidi, Indic) people
to reconfigure their system to use CJK (bidi, Indic)-capable
editors.
Note I meant EUC-JP, EUC-KR, EUC-CN (aka GB), and Big5 by
the word "popular multibyte encodings". UTF-8 and GB18030
will be added in future.
> However, one point I *do* think is relevant here is that "can get
> through an editing session without referring to a manual" means that the
> user must first /understand/ the contextual help; so points should be
> given for good i18n/l10n.
I agree that easiness (not requiring manual) is important.
This also favors my opinion. The current situation of Debian
(and other Linux/BSD systems) requires CJK/bidi/Indic people
to learn how to reconfigure their system to support
CJK/bidi/Indic scripts. Since there are a lot of reconfigure
items, we will have to buy books to know how to reconfigure.
I (Japanese speaker) also bought several books and the total
amount costs about 100 dollars. (Before I could set up my
Japanese environment for my Debian box, how can I read
Japanese online manuals?)
The current situation is that we have to have expert-level
knowledge to use Debian (and other systems besides Windows
and Macintosh) with Japanese. I have to know about editor,
terminal emulator, console, keyboard, input method, window
managers, mp3 players, web browsers, text viewers, mail
clients, shells, computer language interpreters, text
formatters, text processing languages, word processors,
and every fields of softwares which have oppotunities to
display or input texts. Thus, I have worked to reduce such
need of expert-level knowledges one by one since I started
using Debian.
---
Tomohiro KUBOTA <kubota@debian.org>
http://www.debian.or.jp/~kubota/
"Introduction to I18N" http://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/intro-i18n/
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