full fathom five: "We did not expect our users to use non-latin characters"

"We did not expect our users to use non-latin characters"

Michael Studman — Wed, 28 Jun 2006 00:00:00 -0400

I have a personal policy of poisoning the coffee of any developer in my team or in my general vicinity who utters this sentiment. I wish the tech lead(s) of a certain leading non-mainstream social networking site did too.

From their customer support department:

We are aware of the problems which you mentioned in your e-mail. However, unfortunately, we are currently not supporting non-latin characters on our website I am afraid.

This is simply because when **** was first designed, we did not expect our users to use non-latin characters. That is why there are not enough spaces in [Profile] section.

We are currently planning to translate **** into Japanese, as the first non-European language, and it hopefully will go live later this year.

Adding some level of i18n support to an application from the ground up just makes sense - even if you have no plans to localise anytime soon your customers are loathe to de-localise their names or their sentiments (ie anglicise) that they wish to store in your application.

One bag of ratsack is in the post.

""We did not expect our users to use non-latin characters"" by Paul Coleman

Thu, 06 Jul 2006 16:47:59 -0400

In one of my earlier incarnations I spent several years working in the localisation business and this attitude was prevalent. I would have thought that after all this time with a global internet, attitudes would have changed. Maybe I'm being too naive. People who know me won't touch any coffee that I've been near to!

PS How is life post-Colchester?

""We did not expect our users to use non-latin characters"" by Michael Studman

Wed, 28 Jun 2006 14:05:23 -0400

.... . .-. . / .... . .-. . .-.-.-

""We did not expect our users to use non-latin characters"" by Matt Quail

Wed, 28 Jun 2006 01:21:26 -0400

Latin-1 takes up too much storage. Hell, even 7-bit ascii is 6 bits too many. Bring back 1-bit Morse Code, I say.