One of the problems with some English software companies it the fact that they are from the USA and are selling their product world wide. Sure they try to get the non-English languages done in-house, but many times they do not have people who natively speak those languages, but people who learned to speak it as a second or third one.
I really like the LO model where you have the language as a separate part and you just add the language packs to define the language[s] of the software package. You then do not have to rewrite the software for the new or improved languages. People who use LO in non-English environments are lucky to be able to have access to over 100 different languages to choose from. There was a statement that LO covered about 95% of the world population for usable language for the population. I would think that is one of the big marketing items outside of the English speaking countries. How many software companies are willing to go that extra step to give you all of these regional language choices? I do not know a single one in the USA [only] that does this. When you have world wide support for an open source software, like LO, you get these regions involved into making the software more usable to their region of the world. That part of the development model is a key to the growing success for our LibreOffice project. Yes, LO and many other products use English as a default, but you always get the option to choose your default language early in the download and install process. For the Windows version, you get to choose many languages during the install process, while Linux users need to install separate language packs post-install. Well that is the still easy to get the non-English languages setup for your install. Of course the ability to switch languages is a good idea for users who have multi-languages using the computer and the LO install. Think a computer center in a college that has a large number of people that do not natively speak English and need to create documents in their native language[s] and have other languages in those documents as well. Having the ability to spell check more than one language within a document is a good thing. On 09/27/2013 08:44 PM, Jay Lozier wrote: > Tom > > One of the reasons I think OpenSource understands better user needs is > that it is open to outsiders. Looking at the LO English user list > there are a number of people asking questions and commenting from > literally everywhere in the world. The diversity helps one to > understand the needs of others when it comes to software. Also, a > developer from say Korea can join the project to improve Korea > language menus and UI. The problem closed source has is until at least > the beta stage almost all the work is done in house. So if it is not > mentioned or explicitly required it probably will not get done. > > -----Original Message----- > *From*: Tom Davies <[email protected] > <mailto:tom%20davies%20%[email protected]%3e>> > *Reply-to*: Tom Davies <[email protected]> > *To*: [email protected] <[email protected] > <mailto:%[email protected]%22%20%[email protected]%3e>> > *Cc*: Kracked_P_P---webmaster <[email protected] > <mailto:kracked_p_p---webmaster%20%[email protected]%3e>> > *Subject*: Re: off-list Re: [libreoffice-users] Re: How to remove the > spell checker > *Date*: Sat, 28 Sep 2013 01:27:15 +0100 (BST) > > Hi :) Those beliefs are about the same as most people in OpenSource > that i have heard expressing an opinion about it all. It's one of the > many reasons i prefer OpenSource. There are so many such good people > in it, total stars. Regards from Tom :) > > <snip> -- To unsubscribe e-mail to: [email protected] Problems? http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/ Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/users/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted
