Topic: better i18n/l10n

[B. Rupp]

I think it's essential that a product like e-smith server does provide support for many different languages in the world. I for example need German umlauts in file names and had to add the setting "character set=ISO8859-1" to the file "/etc/smb.conf" (and the correct code page), before I actually could use shares from within Windows clients. This is also the case with the keyboard definitions. - Sure, I can modify it if I know how (after all, this is Linux . But the various settings where language and/or localisation settings can be modified should be accessible from one central location (dropdown list in e-smith-manager).

What I don't understand is that every product from the US is so US-centric. Sure, many people live there any many speak English but how about Europeans, people from Asia, or from wherever, who use special characters within their file names? They probably like e-smith and want to use it in their companys but then again: the installation isn't as easy as in the manual because they have to add various settings for their location _manually_. That's not what e-smith, Inc. is after, isn't it?

This shouldn't be much of a problem because the underlying RedHat 6.1 does i18n well, I suppose. (or whatever verison of RedHat is used for the next e-smith server)

Other from that, e-smith rocks!

[Charlie Brady]

B. Rupp wrote:

> I think it's essential that a product like e-smith server does
> provide support for many different languages in the world.

We recognise that internationalisation is important, and it will be a feature of a future release. However please remember that e-smith only has limited development resources, and many competing requests for enhancements.

> What I don't understand is that every product from the US is so
> US-centric.

You should be aware that the e-smith server and gateway is a product of Canada

> Sure, many people live there any many speak English
> but how about Europeans, people from Asia, or from wherever,
> who use special characters within their file names?

I'm sure there are some. But unfortunately, perhaps, currently all the e-smith employees are native English speakers, so we have no personal need to support foreign keyboards and character sets.

Nevertheless we do recognise the need to make improvements in this area. We would very much appreciate it if you can list all the changes that you have made to your system to saisfy your needs, and email to bugs@e-smith.com.

Warm regards

Charlie

[B. Rupp]

> You should be aware that the e-smith server and gateway is a product of Canada

Ups... I'm sorry about this one. That's the prove that I instantly think "us" when something is English (

> I'm sure there are some. But unfortunately, perhaps, currently all the e-smith employees are native English speakers, so we have no personal need to support foreign keyboards and character sets.

Hmm, employees and customers is not the same methinks. Sure, you don't need French accents but your customers do! (hmm, Canada you say? "You" speak French as well, right?) Well, I'm no market analyst or something but I _think_ it's important. The www administration console doesn't need to be translated into 32 langauges but the underlying applications (here: samba) should at least _understand_ what a "ç" or "ä" is and know how to deal with it. Currently, file names with special characters (which are allowed by FAT32 and Linux ext2fs/Reiserfs) look very ugly. This can't be very hard to implement as Linux itself is very international already (just have a look at Linux Mandrake, they support many, many languages. That's one of the reasons it's so popular.).

Unfortunately I'm no expert at all this, I found a solution to the special character problem only by trial and error. As mentioned in my first posting, I added the ISO charset and the correct code page to smb.conf. As far as I remember, the settings are described in the man pages of samba. Then it works, without additional software (ya see, it's not that hard to implement ) . On my Mandrake box they (Mandrakesoft) set by default a few environment variables which affect the languages (like "LANG=de" or "LANGUAGE=de_CH:de" etc.). BTW, those env. variables are set in the file /etc/sysconfig/i18n, which AFAIK RedHat uses, too (I'm no RedHat user). But don't ask me about details!

If you have a look at the i18n from Linux Mandrake you should get the point.

You know why SuSE Linux is very popular in Germany? - Yes, because it supports the local environment better than RedHat (although I don't know about newer releases like RH 7.0). You want to know why I say this? -> Adjust your product to other (local) places and people start buying it, even if the installation and the manual are only English )

No joke: If people other than US residents (and Canada, too ) encounter mangled file names with your product (and every European will do this), they don't like it. However if you make it work transparently (like everything other in e-smith), they are going to like it!

I did not send this proposal to bugs@e-smith.com, because it's not really a bug (English rules...) and my solution is probably not the best. The topic is here but the technical implementation (if there is one) is up to you.

I hope you understand my explanation (I'm not very good at explaining things in English ((   )