From: Dave Thomas <dave@...>
Date: 2003-05-13T06:27:09+09:00
Subject: Re: FAQ - language used for postings?

Josef 'Jupp' Schugt wrote:

> I question that is not answered by the FAQ: What languages are
> acceptable for postings?

I'm not sure this is a meaningful question.

Instead, I think each poster needs to consider how best to communicate 
with the audience here. If you have a question and you post it in 
Portuguese, then you cut down your potential set of answerers. However, 
you're still likely to find a number of people who can understand and 
answer you post.

I also believe that many people can understand enough to a make sense of 
a response in a language that they couldn't use to write a post. For 
example, I can probably extract the sense from a posting in French, 
German, or Dutch (by coincidence your original list:), but there's no 
way I could post anything meaningful in any of them. This is helped by 
the fact that we can all read a common language, Ruby. This means that 
when a post comes by that looks like:


   Qwetuela de uyeyei?

     a = "abc\ndef"
     a =~ /a.*f/    => nil??????


most folks on the list can work out the question, and answer back 
(probably in English).

In fact I subscribe to the Japanese lists on this basis: none of the 
words make sense, but the code examples help me keep abreast of changes 
to the language.



Cheers



Dave