> [EMAIL PROTECTED] a écrit : > > >Dean A. Snyder wrote, > > > >>The issue is not what we CAN do; the issue is what will we be FORCED to > >>do that already happens right now by default in operating systems, > >>Google, databases, etc. without any end user fiddling?
The trend for such systems is to build in generic, default behavior (for collation or for other aspects of localizable information), to support a number of high visibility and high demand particular behaviors "out of the box" and then to open the systems to end-user customization of particular combinations of behavior. The IT industry is, of course, a long way away from perfection here, in part because the entire field of internationalization of software is considered bizarre geekiness even among your run of the mill programming geeks. But the globalization of information technology is inevitable, in my opinion, and as that globalization proceeds, the inevitable tension between central control and end user demand will play itself out in ways that make the technology eventually more flexible and adaptive. People complaining about software now need to take occasional reality breaks and remind themselves of what things were like in the 1970's, when you still typed in your Fortran programs on punchcards, fed in your decks, and then waited 2 hours for the computer operator to deliver your line printer output to get a list of the syntax errors in your program. > > > >That's the question. > > > >Since search engines like Google survive based on their ability to serve > >users' wants and find what users seek, why wouldn't Google make such > >a tailoring? Google is on the frontline for this stuff: https://services.google.com/tcbin/tc.py?cmd=status The applicable model is to *distribute* the work of adaptation to the people who understand it best -- the people who have the requirements and the knowledge of what they want and the means to specify the local behavior. In this particular case, we are talking about translation of UI into dozens of languages, rather than end-user specification of search criteria. But in principle the concept of distributed definition of string filtering or string matching criteria for a search could also be implemented. If not Google, then somebody else, will come up with a way to do this and let the users devise their own criteria for how they search into the massive internet (and other) databases involved. Patrick responded: > Because the Phoenician user community is very very small ? Same goes for > Microsoft on some collations already mentioned (French Canadian sorting, > Khmer) and those are much larger communities. And the answer is to democratize the approach. One shouldn't be demanding that The Borg centrally define and implement all uses for all users, so that users simply dial Channel 621 and then sit there passively assimilating and get dished up their content. Instead, the users should demand of The Borg that user-definable requirements be supported actively, so that the *people* get to define what they do and how it is done at the point they interact with the software. --Ken
