[Kolab-devel] Kolab Support for the Toltec Connector

[Bo Thorsen]

On Thursday 06 November 2003 16:30, Bernhard Reiter wrote:
> > > We specify in the client, which folder should be the parent of the
> > > groupware folders. In that parent, we place folders named
> > > "Calendar", "Contacts", "Notes", and "Tasks". If the users want to,
> > > they can get the localized names Outlook uses, but I really hate
> > > that, because the MS morons translated the folder names on disk
> > > instead of just in the GUI.
> >
> > As long as I have data persistence in folder names you can call me a
> > moron ;-)
>
> What Bo means is that standard names for folders and then a translation
> by the client might have been the better solution, because then clients
> with different language settings could work on the same folders
> without having a huge map of all translations of the folder names.

More important is what the user sees when he switches languages. (I know 
Outlook/Windows can't do this on the fly, but with roaming profiles, 
Windows users have this problem.)

Say, a German user has access to two machines - one with a German install 
and one with an English install. Now, when he switches between these two 
machines, the default calendar is in two different folders.

Now, it gets even more worrying when you talk about localization. In 
Denmark, we use . between thousands and , for the decimal point. Now 
suppose Excel or OOo-calc would use these localized number writings for 
the functions. That would mean changing language means destroying your 
numbers. And Excel actually do translate the function names, so a Danish 
spreadsheet can't just be imported into an English Excel. And so on...

This is why the concept is completely broken. All translation must always 
happen in the GUI, not on the disk. If that was the case, no matter your 
choice of language, the application would work differently.

I suppose I could have given this explanation instead of just calling MS 
morons :-)

Bo.
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