🚀 go-pugleaf

In message <9305300657.AA04938@rhino.cis.vutbr.cz>, Paul Robinson writes:
> But if you send mail out, chances are it posts "To:","CC:", "Subject:" and
> possibly other options, all using the English words.  And if you have
> someone who is responsible for mail at your site, that person has to
> be able to read english to debug SMTP, which ALL transactions are done
> in English.
>
> But there is a problem (especially Quebec, north of the border to me)
> which mandates by law use of the French language as the primary language to b
> e
> used unless the other party agrees to use of a different language.  The
> Mailer programs we have only operate in English and all of the internal
> routines use English to transport material.
>
> Anyone taken a crack at considering an E-Mail system that generated or
> received mail using foreign prompts?  (Internally it could still use the
> English prompts to support regular mail, but translate them for other
> systems.)

It seems to me, without wishing to offend anyone, that this is a
complete waste of time and energy. I would agree that having things
like "Subject:", "From:" and so forth in the user's chosen language
should be encouraged, but at the *user interface*. There's no earthly
reason for complicating the specification of a *protocol*, which is
what SMTP is, by requiring a multi-language capability. This calls to
mind the old debate about whether programming language keywords should
be language-selectable. In the programming language case, although I
personally think this has many more negative aspects than positive
ones, I'm willing to put up with it. Changing network protocols for
this reason seems to me simply a needless and messy complication,
since 99.9999% of users and programmers never look at them.

Patrick O'Callaghan			Internet: poc@usb.ve
Departamento de Computacion		NICNAME: PO22
Universidad Simon Bolivar 		Tel: +058 (2) 906 3320, 906 3947
Apartado de Correos 89000		FAX: +058 (2) 93 71 28
Caracas, Venezuela			"There is no Net but the Internet"