Vivien Kraus wrote: > What if we translated command-line option names? Then, a shell script that, say, copies a file would contain
cp --backup "$1" "$2" in the English version, cp --sauvegarde "$1" "$2" in the French version, cp --Sicherungskopie "$1" "$2" in the German version, and so on. Yes, there have been programming languages where the keywords were different (English/French/etc.) in each version of the programming language. And yes, there have been spreadsheet programs where the operators in formulas were different (English/French/etc.) in each version of the spreadsheet. And then people realized that passing on their program or spreadsheet to someone in another country did not work, because that other user would have to translate that program line-by-line or that spreadsheet cell-by-cell, before they could use it. And the vendor realized that they had to translate every tutorial and every programming guide into each possible language separately. So, it was a PITA for the users and a PITA for the vendors. And thus the idea was abandoned. Bruno
