Congratulations Gason.

Ken


povray.org admin team wrote:

> From time to time we of the POV-Team get bug reports or complaints that are
> downright rude and sometimes also insulting. Today we received this doozy which
> has to rate as one of the most rude and insulting emails we can recall
> receiving this year.
>
> First, a bit of background : 'true' English (i.e. the English language as the
> English themselves spell it) uses the 'z' less often than American English.
> Words such as 'minimised', 'optimised', etc, are spelt just like that - with an
> 's' instead of a 'z' (e.g. not 'minimized' or 'optimized').
>
> Over the years, Americans have modified various parts of the English language
> to create these variants (another good example is the US 'color' vs the English
> 'colour'). That's all well and good - we don't dispute the right of Americans
> to change the language they speak.
>
> However, POV-Ray is an international effort, and several of the POV authors are
> not US residents. These developers generally speak English as the English do,
> rather than American English (this is typical of most of the English-speaking
> world, outside the USA). This means that software developed by these persons
> will often use English, rather than American, spelling, unless they make an
> effort to do otherwise.
>
> That's our right and our choice. Almost every English speaker in the world
> (outside the USA) knows that there are two ways of spelling some words - the
> English way, and the American way.
>
> Unfortunately, it seems that the reverse is not true. We do have, in the POVWIN
> help file, a comment to that effect in the very first topic (which obviously
> the person whose email is featured below didn't read).
>
> Look at it from our point of view : if we spell something correctly, using the
> English spelling, it's only fair that we ought to get peeved if someone writes
> to us telling us that we 'don't know how to spell'. Non-American English
> speakers would perhaps rightly get a little annoyed if an American tells them
> THEY don't know how to spell, when after all it's Americans who changed the
> spelling in the first place ! The original English spelling is still valid,
> like it or not !
>
> So anyhow, the person whose email to us is excerpted below seems to have the
> rather strange belief that if he writes to us and insults us, somehow we'll be
> only too pleased to fix the so-called 'bug' (and he did call it a bug) in our
> software.
>
> We dashed off a quick reply to him telling him - in no uncertain terms - what
> we thought of his idea, but we're posting this here in the hope that some of
> his fellow POV Users will also be able to explain this to him in a more
> reasoned way (rather then the somewhat annoyed tone of our reply ;)
>
> We also would like to officially nominate Jason Barlow for the 'Rudest Support
> Email of 1998' award.
>
> -----------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Return-Path: jas### [at] xmissioncom
> From: "Jason Barlow" <jas### [at] xmissioncom>
> To: <win### [at] povrayorg>
> Subject: Minor Bug...
> Date: Thu, 17 Sep 1998 01:03:02 -0600
>
> [request for the following 'bug' to be fixed in version 3.1 deleted]
>
> Whoever is writing  the string/menu resources for  the Windows version is not
> very adept with words like optimized, minimized, or customized...all of which
> are misspelled: optimised, minimised, and customised in POVray. Bad spelling
> is just one of those things that detracts from the professionalism of the
> product and makes users question the intelligence of the authors.
>
> [rest of email deleted]
>
> -----------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> He's questioning _our_ intelligence ... ? ;)
>
> -- POV-Ray Webmaster

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