In a message dated 2001-09-27 1:52:27 AM, cg@cdegroot.com writes:

->Fleeberz@aol.com said: ->Oh, and complaining that the English-only interface is a hindrance, ->well, Computerchannel.de is German-only, but I was still able to ->figure out what they were talking about.

What a dumb remark. They're talking about kids here, and I can assure you that the average kid's English outside the US or UK is by far not enough to use Squeak. If Squeak aims to be something for kids, it needs to be internationalized.

What an absolute moron I was for failing to consider the considerable focus of the Squeak community regarding the Children of the World. Obviously, I must have taken the "English-only" complaint out of context, thinking that the *reviewer*, rather than the *potential user* could have tried harder to make sense of the (currently) English-centric implementation.

Speaking of dumbness, I guess you'll just have to take that up with the fool(s) who haven't internationalised Squeak yet - after all, why should they even suggest the possibility of children using the thing unless the menus can easily be set to display in Farsi or Erzya, never mind the absurdity of English-named classes, methods, and all that.

We've supported Unicode for some time now, right? And what about the blind Gagauzian-speaking kids? Is the text-to-speech functionality unfairly biased against them?

My point is that I, being a stupid English-speaking American, having no fluency whatsoever in any but my native language, had never before attempted to read "foreign" information on Squeak, because of the abundance of English material available which is so much more understandable to me. I falsely believed that Squeak was continuing to evolve, and wasn't expected to be everything to everyone all at once.

The astute reviewer rightly criticized Squeak for failing to have evolved sufficiently for a global audience of adults, let alone children. Surely, had I an iota of a clue, I would have realized that the important thing to do regarding this matter would be to complain about an inadequate localization framework - too bad I missed that chance.

Shame on you, Cees, for chastising me for my obvious ignorance. My respect for you has been betrayed; I would have expected you "Germanize" Squeak instead, if that's what it's begging for, and perhaps write some comprehensible on-line tutorials as well.

If anyone needs tutorials that a 9- or 10-year-old could understand, it's me. I can't afford the ridiculous price of the Squeak (Smalltalk...) books, and from what I read on this list, that's the only way to ever figure it out. You and others can spend hundreds (thousands?) of dollars to fly around and chat with other OOP aficionados, I can't. That's what makes you better than me. I am happy for you.

Keep on Squeakin' --Flee

Never meddle in the affairs of idiots, it makes them soggy and hard to light.