At 01:35 AM 24/08/2004 +0000, you wrote:

>--- In IBObjects@yahoogroups.com, Helen Borrie <helebor@t...> wrote:
> >
> > And even more "too bad" that NOT ONE SINGLE Chinese person has
>fronted up
> > to help or advise on defining the changes needed in the intl
> > module. Demand is one thing, supply is another...
>
>Dear Helen,
>
>I think it is unfair to say chinese people are unwilling to help. You
>need to understand Firebird is not popular among the chinese
>commnuity: I can find lots of chinese books on MySQL but not a single
>one on Firebird or Interbase in the bookstore here.

...because no CHINESE authors have written them. Sorry, Michael, but
multi-lingual people like yourself have key roles to play in "building the
mountain". The latest and greatest version of open source software is the
top of the mountain - the head and shoulders. Beneath that are many heads
and many shoulders...the first Chinese book about Firebird might be a
translation of my book...or it might be the accumulation of many insightful
white papers written in Chinese about Firebird. Somebody wrote the first
MySQL book in Chinese, too...somebody wrote the first character set mapping
for the Chinese unicode subsets...

Knowing myself how downright TOUGH is was to put together a book that
people want, I'm the last one to pretend it is easy. I left the planet for
a year, depended on other people for income to pay the rent; I wrote
virtually every passage at least twice; I was constantly exchanging email
threads with people who knew certain subjects better than I. For months,
literally, I was in the state where I had to look at my computer to see
what day it was. There were times, believe me, when I was sorely tempted to
just walk into the sea and not turn around.

Someone has to get the respective balls rolling for mainland and Taiwan
Chinese speakers (and for Korea, too). Take inspiration from the
Brazilians, please. They get projects like this **done**. They had the
first Firebird books. They have some excellent magazines, that do Firebird
proud. They have community leaders who take a lot of trouble to make it
possible for people to take up Firebird. That didn't happen by magic --
nor, indeed, by money. It took hard work, dedication and the willingness
to take a few risks and be wrong sometimes. In the past 18 months, the
Japanese have gotten themselves organised to do the same for
Japanese-speaking users. Don't get bogged down by what's not there: be the
one who puts it there.

Helen