On Sat, Apr 1, 2017 at 12:17 PM, Rick Johnson <rantingrickjohn...@gmail.com> wrote: > On Thursday, March 30, 2017 at 12:43:59 AM UTC-5, Chris Angelico wrote: >> Except that it doesn't actually take very much work to call >> on someone else's library, which is what you get when you >> use Unicode properly. (At least, assuming you're using a >> decent language like Python, which comes with Unicode >> libraries, and a decent GUI toolkit if you're going that >> way.) > > Really. Since when does Python come with a "decent GUI kit"?
I didn't say it came with one; I said you should use (a) a decent language, and (b) a decent GUI toolkit. Both do exist, but with Python, the best GUI toolkits are installed with pip rather than being part of the standard library. >> Nope. I can't speak Mandarin, but I can make absolutely >> sure that all my programs can accept Chinese characters. A >> friend of mine sent me an audio file with a name that >> included some Chinese, and I was able to handle it no >> problem. > > Most people just quietly change the filename and move on, > but if you want to spend the extra time worrying about every > foreign charactor, you certainly have that right. But you > don't have a right to lecture everyone else about your new > found religion. I suppose you'd be okay with all file names being upper-case 8.3 format, and that anyone who wants mixed case and/or longer names should have no right to lecture people either. >> > The only justification required is the bottom line. If your >> > products generate profit, then you're doing something >> > right. Besides, you don't need _everyone_ on the planet to >> > buy your product to be a success. Unlike the business >> > practices of Apple, we would be wise to leave plenty of >> > room for others to enter the market. Competition is good >> > for everyone. Monopolies are evil. >> >> Riiiiiight. What's the "bottom line" for open source >> software? How do you measure whether your product is >> generating a profit or not? > > Easy. You count the number of active community members. You > also closely observe the "community health tends" over time. > Having a small community today is not necessarily a bad > thing if the community is healthy and growing. OTOH, a large > unhealthy community today could be a ghost town tomorrow. > Biologist refer to that phenomenon as extinction. Which is > neither good nor profitable. > > Rectangular sheets of paper with dead presidents printed on > them are not the only source of profits. Crowd sourcing can > be quite a profitable enterprise even in the absence of > money -- that is, *IF*, and only *IF* -- you invest the time > required to lower barriers of entry and foster participation > from diverse external sources. Social homogeny and > intellectual isolation lead to collective oblivion. I think you need to define the bottom line with something more stable than a greased roller skating rink. ChrisA -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
