This discussion on the London.pm (London Perl Mongers) mailing list might be interesting to local Linux advocates as well. Specially those involved in spell-checking ;-)
Archive is at: http://london.pm.org/pipermail/london.pm/Week-of-Mon-20030609/thread.html Gabor ===================== >On 6 Jun 2003 at 9:38, Philip Newton wrote: > >> This bit: >> >> He wants to force computer companies to install spellchecking >> software which offers English instead of American definitions. >> >> reminds me of an article I read about Norwegian where they (IIRC) told >> Microsoft to provide spellcheckes in both Bokmål and Nynorsk or they >> could not use MS Office in public schools. Or something like that. You're correct there ... ;-) >Didn't find a direct reference, but this article refers to it: > >http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,58778,00.html > >It discusses getting a spell checker for Scottish Gaelic, and includes >this quote: > > Microsoft's Office suite currently ships in 18 languages and the > company has been persuaded to support minority tongues in the > past. It developed a version of Windows for Nynorsk -- Norway's > second language -- in December, reportedly after Norway threatened > to boycott Microsoft software in its schools. (... and Steve Ballmer _did_ react, and so did MS.no. :) And this was one of the "SkoleLinux" (*) advantages above MS applications for a while. But still I believe Skolelinux still is alone with it's three official Norwegian languages wordprocessor: Bokmål, Nynorsk and Samisk (A sort of Lappish, with both a south- and a north-, not-similar, dialect :) A lot of official languages for less than 5 million people, but it has something to do with how we are, I believe ;-) (And I am proud of it) (*) Norwegian-made School-linux-distro made specially for school installation, as Workstation or Server. A nice product, fitted on 1 CD, I believe, and based on Debian Linux. With lot of useful applications, and an easy installation, thinking about the teachers who is targeted here ... It has already proven to be good in those tests I have seen about it, and well-approved in many schools already, also regarding much lesser costs in license fees. -- mvh/Regards Kåre Olai Lindbach ================================================================= 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]
