Question about Japanese and computers.

Choser · n00b Joined: 08 Apr 2004 Posts: 21

I've always wanted to know this, so I figure I pose the question here in this forum, with the hope that someone familiar with this but also speaks english can help me.

How do native Japanese people see computer text? I've seen many screenshots of Windows and Gnome and modern gui's with eastern characters, but what about on the command line in linux, or back in the day with dos? What I've always thought was that, inside some text editing program, a japanese character set could be loaded, but at the command prompt, is chroot, ls mkdir, all the same? Or are there separate commands - and the source code itself is all english. The BIOS boot and post screens too.... my guess is that using a computer anywhere in the world has always required some knowledge of english?

I've seen the japanese keyboards with the extra kanji keys and the kana toggle button, but I didnt know how low-level the language made its way in..

Uhm, thats pretty much it.

chris78 · Posted: Fri Apr 23, 2004 1:50 pm Post subject:

If you want to know how low .. maybe a hint is the compiler messages are japanese.
Of course all handles and messages, buttons and help is japanese also.
The commands are all the same .. on a japanese linux you also need to type "ls" to get a directory listing.
Maybe the question is more like .. how deep did english get into japanese linux.
And that is real far. The reason is simple. Japanese OpenSource developers also want other worldwide people to join their project so the start to write source comments and development docu in english. Sometimes even at first in english and then translation to japanese.
However all multiple character countries get much more trouble when it comes to foreign software because many developers are still not aware of NON-US character sets. And of the fact that the A in ASCII doesnt mean allmighty but "American Standard Code for Information Interchange".

questions and corrections welcome

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GNUnet

gebner · Posted: Fri Apr 23, 2004 6:55 pm Post subject:

chris78 · Posted: Sat Apr 24, 2004 3:12 am Post subject:

Sure

Kind of me too ... even though i have some reason i dont really have to use UTF-8.
But finally i think that all software must become UNI- or some other international
code capable. At least the software that wants to be user friendly

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GNUnet

skyfw · n00b Joined: 13 Feb 2004 Posts: 7

Also a note, that for many years learning English is a requirement in school. Most Japanese have at least a rudimentary understanding of english, and can read it well enough to understand. English isn't just used in computers, in Japan, it's used everywhere. Store names, products, posters, TV, etc.

Most Japanese aren't going to have a problem with "cd" or "rm" because it's in English, they are just going to ask "PC load letter?!? WTF does that mean?!?!" ( in Japanese, of course

).