On Sat, 18 May 2002, "Nadav Har'El" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> MosheZ, it sounds like you're playing the devil's advocate here. No, I'm actually stating my opinions. Which are a bit extreme. > It sounds like you don't claim you don't want this list to be in Hebrew, > but rather that you don't want Hebrew to be used on Linux, EVER. No, I want Hebrew support in Linux to be good before you switch over the mailing list. Or create a newer one, so when I ask "How do I connect to bezeqint via ADSL" people willl point me to the Hebrew archives. > Also, please don't pretend that while the iso8859 (8 bit) encodings are > still alive it is possible to use Hebrew without any configuration - after > all, how is your mail client Er.....Nadav, I'm sure you know about the Content-Type header. > Also, please don't pretend that's it's impossible, or even very hard to > set up your system to read and write Hebrew. It shouldn't be harder than > setting up your (say) modem. Setting up my modem takes 3 minutes. And I'm a good enough blind typist that I could probably do it with my eyes closed. Do you claim setting up Hebrew is this easy? > In a perfect world, you'd even have a set of > RPMs (or DEBs or whatever) that installing them would give you out-of-the-box > Hebrew support (that's what I hoped ivrix.org.il will achieve, but so far > this hasn't happened). Why are you wasting time on this debate instead of working on ivrix, then? > But if you're really interested in reading or writing Hebrew, it isn't that > terribly difficult to set it up. I'm not really interested. I'm really interested in having a local resource for Israeli-specific and general community enhancing linux related discussion. > Every system you use? Do you seriously mean to suggest that your read your > mail on many different systems, and each has a completely different > OS and configuration? If that is the case, your mail synchronization > troubles and plain-old configuration troubles are probably worse than your > Hebrew troubles. Actually, there are good solutions to syncrhonize mailboxes. > It wasn't me who wanted the list to be Hebrew-only. In fact I said I prefered > the list to stay English! So please don't put words in my mouth. Having a second list in Hebrew also has problems, as I explained above. > But I find it very strange that as an Hebrew-speaking Israeli living in > Israel you don't want to be able to at least be able to read (if not write) > emails in Hebrew. So, I'm strange. Sue me. > The only legitimate reason I can see to request people not to write in > Hebrew when they prefer to do so is because some of this list's members do > not understand Hebrew at all (be they foreigners, immigrants, Arabs, > Iranians, or any other English-speaker that has always been welcome here). Which is another question. This is linux-il, and .il has two official languages. If you allow Hebrew here, I feel it is only fair that you allow Arabic. Currently, we are equally harsh to Hebrew and Arabic speakers. > And so it will be for you, if you wanted (I know you a bit, you're not as > stupid as you are pretending to be :)). If you don't want - well, than that's > ok - nobody will force you to read these Hebrew messages. But next time > your boss, girlfriend, friend, I don't currently have a gf, but the last time I had one, she e-mailed me only in English. And my boss knows better than to send me Hebrew mail, since he already knows the "Linux type" ;-) All my friends use either Pine or Mutt on Linux systems and would find writing me Hebrew mais harder than I would find reading them. > or who-knows-who sends you a personal email > in Hebrew and your system isn't set up to read them or reply - you'll be > sorry. No. Personal mail is something I have control over. My mom, for example, has been taught by my yelling not to send me Hebrew mail, so she simply refrains from doing so. I don't think my sister ever sent me e-mail, but if she did, I'm pretty certain it would be in English. > First of all Hebrew isn't "my agenda", it's simply a language I (and everyone > around me) speak and I would find it convenient (but not necessary) to be > able to use it on my computer too. Using Hebrew on Linux does seem to be your agenda. > The more people programmers will start to run across the Hebrew annoyances, I'm pretty adept at avoiding the Hebrew annoyances, and I personally think that the correct solution is to go in a way similar to the Turkish route -- keep our language, change our alphabet to something saner. RTL hasn't made much sense ever since we gave up stone tablets. > > See? Easier to get the rules changed. > > Are you kidding? > "the rules" is that (I'm estimating) 85% of the Israeli population is > fluent in Hebrew, and (say) 30% of the Israeli population is fluent in (not > just knows some basic) English. So you're never be able to escape needing > to use Hebrew for some of your communications with other Israelis. Yes I can. I can decide which Israelis are worth my time. > And > unless you want to have a second Windows computer to do these things (like > write a letter to your bank, do your income tax forms, etc. etc.), you'd > need to be able to do those things on your Linux. No, I can shout at my bank until it has an English interface. > Even in the Technion, it was impossible to get that rule changed. The > dean of graduate students was a Hebrew language fanatic, so he made a rule > that all students (with exceptions made for people who don't know Hebrew) > MUST write their thesis in Hebrew. There was noting I could do about this > rule. Yes you could. You could have done your thesis in a sane university. If the dean found out he has no MSc students, he'd change that rule so fast the LTR would smack him upside the head. ================================================================= To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word "unsubscribe" in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
