Hi,

From: Glenn Maynard <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: supporting XIM
Date: Fri, 28 Mar 2003 16:49:31 -0500

> Stop using the word "racist".  It's like saying "if you don't support a
> feature I want, you're supporting terrorism"; it makes people groan and
> stop paying attention.  It's inflammatory, doesn't help your case at all,
> and injures your credibility.

I see.  I didn't know subtle nuance of the word.  (Dictionaries never
teach us about such nuances.)

However, I am often annoyed by people who think supporting European
languages is more important than supporting Asian languages even when
there are no technical problem to achieve such support.  They never
have racist ideas.  They just feel non-European languages are somewhat
exotic and support of such languages is a "special" feature of softwares.

For fair, I should mention that usual Japanese developers and users
don't think about non-Japanese/English language support.  I don't 
think they are racists.  They just forget there are languages other
than Japanese and English.

How should I call such people?  I know they are never "racists" in its
original meaning.

Note that even if they are not "racists", the result (that there are
few internationalized softwares) is as almost same as they are really
racists.  The difference is -- I have a little hope to persuade these
developers not to forget about non-European-language speakers.  On the
other hand, Real racists are those who explicitly know about non-
European-language speakers and who think they should be discriminated.

---
Tomohiro KUBOTA <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
http://www.debian.or.jp/~kubota/


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