Subject: Re: Integer with base preserved! From: Erik Naggum <erik@naggum.no> Date: 24 Jan 2004 08:16:40 +0000 Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp Message-ID: <3283921000001843KL2065E@naggum.no> * Björn Lindberg | It would have been neat if conforming lisps would have been allowed to | use as output language for the ~R directive the i18n-specified | language for that platform, eg on Unix it would use language | information from the LC_*/LANG environment variables. Focusing only on the ~R is myopic. How about ~P? I am opposed to the whole localization and internationalization mess, as it is done at the wrong level. Instead of making programs use some strings instead of some other strings, the properly language-oriented approach uses a /protocol/ that results in improved user interaction when the user interface module communicates with the user. If this protocol was properly written and published, and I do /not/ mean APIs, users could write their own user interaction modules and could run the software and the user agent on different computers if they wanted to. The WWW could have offered this separation, but the promise of Java was never realized on the client side and today's user interaction is still controlled almost entirely by the server. In order to design protocols that it is possible to interact with, programmers need to think in very different terms from designing the user interaction as part of the application, and not having to do this is the lure of the string-replacing method. It is all very depressing that programming has never evolved as a discipline that could keep the user interface out of the application «logic», for these days, there is almost no real software development since everybody are working on irrelevant parts of the application. -- Erik Naggum | Oslo, Norway Act from reason, and failure makes you rethink and study harder. Act from faith, and failure makes you blame someone and push harder.