> Put another way, while someone not familiar with English could conceivably
> learn to use the SDL by learning the keywords by rote, if they were not
> trained in the use of ASCII-style data input, would they be unable to 
> code in POV-Ray SDL?

The hurdle is bigger, but can't be avoided completely. Localizing
language keywords is not a good idea, and you wouldn't dream of
doing it with languages like C or Java. However, in my experience,
people in Asia will be very happy when they can have comments,
file names and GUI texts in their native language. I never
looked in the sources, but I suspect POVRay is currently
using ISO-8559-1 latin encoding and 8-bit characters for
all strings in which case all of the above would fail.

Working with arbitrary non-english text is not so intimidating
as as long as you know what you may no longer take for granted.
Here is a friendly introduction to the topic:

http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/Unicode.html

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Christian Froeschlin wrote:
> people in Asia will be very happy when they can have comments,
> file names and GUI texts in their native language. I never
> looked in the sources, but I suspect POVRay is currently
> using ISO-8559-1 latin encoding and 8-bit characters for
> all strings in which case all of the above would fail.

Wrong :-) <http://www.povray.org/documentation/view/3.6.1/263/>

Of course, what the text editors can handle is a different story...

	Thorsten

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> Wrong :-) <http://www.povray.org/documentation/view/3.6.1/263/>

Clap clap! Great! I didn't say anything ;) What about the Windows GUI?

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Christian Froeschlin wrote:
>> Wrong :-) <http://www.povray.org/documentation/view/3.6.1/263/>
> 
> Clap clap! Great! I didn't say anything ;) What about the Windows GUI?

I believe WordPad (not NotePad) supports UTF-8 output.

	Thorsten

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On Sun, 11 Nov 2007 13:11:28 +0100, Thorsten Froehlich <tho### [at] trfde>  
wrote:
> I believe WordPad (not NotePad) supports UTF-8 output.

Notepad can save in UTF-8, at least in WinXP. Not sure about WinNT.  
Definitely not in Win9x.

Not sure if Wordpad can though. Unicode (presumably UTF-16) is supported,  
but I see no option for UTF-8.


-- 
FE

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Christian Froeschlin wrote:
>> Wrong :-) <http://www.povray.org/documentation/view/3.6.1/263/>
> 
> Clap clap! Great! I didn't say anything ;) What about the Windows GUI?

The editor is technically capable of doing it, provided I do a unicode build.

Making sure the rest of the UI is unicode-safe is harder; certainly the
current windows code would not fare well if built as unicode. So it would be
a matter of ensuring that those parts of it that are required to accept utf-8
data (message window, status bar, filename display, etc) can handle it.

-- Chris

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On Sun, 11 Nov 2007 17:31:04 +1100, Chris Cason
<del### [at] deletethistoopovrayorg> wrote:

>Zhenqing Li wrote:
>> Thank you guys! I will get into it right now. :)
>
>Perhaps you can answer a question for me ...
>
>Is the fact that the POv-Ray SDL requires the use of Latin characters (and is
>basically an English-language script) a barrier to its use by cultures that
>use non-Latin character sets?
>
>Put another way, while someone not familiar with English could conceivably
>learn to use the SDL by learning the keywords by rote, if they were not
>trained in the use of ASCII-style data input, would they be unable to code in
>POV-Ray SDL?
>
>-- Chris

All the PCs I have ever seen in China and Hong Kong have an ASCII
keyboard..

The people who use them are obviously familiar with ASCII input.  It
is fascinating to watch them using the pinyin system of phonetic
Chinese to type on a more or less normal ASCII keyboard and the
Chinese characters appear on the screens

Texting on a mobile phone using pinyin or even more impressive using a
stylus on the screen with handwriting recognisition built is more
interesting still and very fast

John

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> Christian Froeschlin wrote:
>>> Wrong :-) <http://www.povray.org/documentation/view/3.6.1/263/>
>> Clap clap! Great! I didn't say anything ;) What about the Windows GUI?
> 
> I believe WordPad (not NotePad) supports UTF-8 output.

He meant the official POV-Win.

By the way, Notepad on Windows XP and higher can save in UTF-8.

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Christian Froeschlin wrote:
> The hurdle is bigger, but can't be avoided completely. Localizing
> language keywords is not a good idea, and you wouldn't dream of
> doing it with languages like C or Java.

I have a Chinese version of the K&R C book. The keywords are english, 
but all the variable names and such are chinese.

Plus, from what I've seen, chinese computer keyboards tend to be latin 
keyboards with software to translate phonetically, in essence. I imagine 
there are some actual chinese keyboards out there, but I never saw one 
when I was in china, and the chinese people I know who don't speak any 
english use latin keyboards.

-- 
   Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)
     Remember the good old days, when we
     used to complain about cryptography
     being export-restricted?

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Hash: SHA1

Chris Cason wrote:
> Zhenqing Li wrote:
>> Thank you guys! I will get into it right now. :)
> 
> Perhaps you can answer a question for me ...
> 
> Is the fact that the POv-Ray SDL requires the use of Latin characters (and is
> basically an English-language script) a barrier to its use by cultures that
> use non-Latin character sets?
> 
> Put another way, while someone not familiar with English could conceivably
> learn to use the SDL by learning the keywords by rote, if they were not
> trained in the use of ASCII-style data input, would they be unable to code in
> POV-Ray SDL?
> 
> -- Chris
Dear Chris:

I think you mean that the keyword in POV-Ray is Latin, so if someone who
totally doesn't know the ABC so even he can understand the manual but
still can't use POV-Ray.

In fact, situation is not so bad as you think. First, in China, we have
a pronunciation system which in fact use Latin characters. (That's why
my name is Zhenqing, not the two Chinese characters.). Computers around
the world now have standard 101 US keyboards. So it isn't a big deal for
Chinese to input Latin characters inside to the computer. Chinese are
using C/C++, FORTRAN or Java too. They are also have the keywords in
English. By the way, every student in China can know more or less some
English. We are not so isolated as you think. :) Second, the barrier for
POV-Ray is its English manual. As I said before, everyone know some
English, but not everyone is good at English. To raise the efficiency
and introduce this amazing software, the first step is to make people
understanding its powerful functions visually, quickly and friendly. So
localized user documents, FAQ, and HOW-TOs are the best ways to achieve
that.

Hope I explain your question.

Have a good day.

Zhenqing

- --
Zhenqing LI
Materials Science & Engineering (Emphasis on Polymer)
Room 161, Sirrine Hall
School of Material Science & Engineering, Clemson University
Clemson, SC 29634, U.S.A
Tel: 864-656-0888(Office)
E-mail: zhe### [at] clemsonedu
Homepage: http://people.clemson.edu/~zhenqil
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