Re: Editor Priorities
On Thu, 9 May 2002, Tomohiro KUBOTA wrote:
> > In other words, the policy as proposed doesn't do anything to make life
> > *worse* for CJK, bidi, and Indic users. It simply fails to make life
> > better for them. However, this is mainly a job for upstream software
> > developers. Debian developers are primarily system integrators.
>
> We, as integrators, now have an easy way to improve equality between
> languages, because there are several editors and other softwares which
> can handle CJK/bidi/... languages. Why should we avoid giving priority
> to such softwares?
I'll ask the opposite question - why give priority to them, just because
they happen to support multi-languages? I thing there are several more
important aspects to an editor than that. If they're in Debian, they can be
pulled down via a task package (or equivalent) for users wanting that
particular language.
> softwares which only supports European languages. Yes, people
> should be called racist who refuse to support non-European
> languages even though there are easy ways to do so and there
> are no technical problems.
...
> Anyway, I decided to improve and internationalize terminal emulators. It
> takes years and now it is partly successful.
So on the one hand, there are easy ways to do so, but it takes years to do
it? That seems like a *damn* good reason to do it, from my point of view as
a volunteer software developer. You did it because it matters to you. I
don't do it because it takes years to do. Somehow I'm a racist for not
volunteering my time for years of work? So, I guess anyone who doesn't
spend all their time volunteering for Meals on Wheels is ageist.
> However, in this case, priority in Debian alternative system is
> completely Debian's problem, not upstream problem.
Yeah, but mandating a particular preference to fuel somebody's agenda is
wrong. Just like mandating that all emacs packages have a higher priority
than vi packages, or something else equally inane. The package is there,
after all, and while integration is an issue, mandating priorities is not
the solution.
> It is obvious my idea improves usability for non-European-language-
> speakers. Also, it is completely Debian's (not upstream's) problem
> and it is easy to achieve my idea. On the other hand, you didn't
> explain a demerit of my idea which is large enough to compensate the
> merit. Could you please explain? Or, do you have any alternative
> proposal?
English is the de facto language. Yes, support for other languages is a
worthy goal, but that should be achieved by reasonable methods - not pushing
software packages just because they are multilingual. You want a
multi-lingual text editor? Choose one out of the many packages available.
Don't want to? Get someone to choose the appropriate one, and make it part
of a task package.
--
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#include <disclaimer.h>
Matthew Palmer
mjp16@ieee.uow.edu.au
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