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Beyond
Borders:
Web Globalization Strategies |
Omissions
& Errata
This page
includes comments I've received about the book as well as a
number of mistakes that slipped through. If you have anything
to add, please email me at jyunker@bytelevel.com.
I truly welcome your input!
Omissions
-
Gender:
Thierry Sourbier of 118nGurus
wisely pointed out that on page 181 I should have mentioned
that gender also plays an important role in string concatenation.
I wish I could have spent more time on this issue. Assembling
text strings on the fly is common practice on interactive
Web sites, but when you localize these sites, those text
strings have to be completely reworked. Don't underestimate
the planning and testing involved.
-
Databases:
Two readers commented that this book does not address the
challenges of managing multilingual text within databases.
This is true. While I agree that this is a very important
issue, it is something that must be tackled database by database.
Oracle manages data in a different fashion than SQL Server
and so on. I recommend going straight to your database vendor
and seeing what support documentation they offer.
- Data input
forms: Another reader wished I had gone into more detail about
data input forms (I briefly touched on it on page 177). For example,
if you have a subscription form and someone in Japan completes
it, be prepared to receive text in an encoding other than ISO
8859-1. And if that text is supposed to dump into a database,
you must prepare your database to accept a wide range of character
sets/encodings. This is complex stuff. Once again, pose the challenge
to your database vendor. Most major vendors are well aware of
these issues and have addressed them.
-
Throughout:
I made the point in the book that you should avoid defining
a font face within your HTML code because you can't always
be sure what fonts your users around the world have installed
on their computers. But then I went ahead and used <font
face> on several of my sample Web pages. Please disregard
this mistake. If you want to create a consistent look across
locales, you'll likely need to use style sheets, a topic I
will address in more detail. (I plan to write an article
on this topic to post on this site in the months ahead).
-
Hands-On
Chapters: I use the French word "recherché"
for "search," which is not correct. It should be
"recherche" (no accent).
-
Page
17: "Spanish is the official language of more than
20 countries; English is the official language of only 7 countries."
Clearly, I got my math wrong and several readers caught this
mistake, some even sending detailed lists of all English-speaking
countries (as many as 65). Nevertheless, the point I was trying
to make remains the same, that the majority of the world's
population do not speak English.
-
Pages
39 and 41. The character set exhibits on these two pages
are mistaken. For an accurate view of Codepage 1252, please
see page 251. For an in-depth reference of character encodings,
visit www.kostis.net/charsets.
-
Page
177:
"in other countries a postal code can be anywhere from
3 to 7 digits..." The 7 should be 10.
- Page 411:
"the euro (abbreviated EMU for European Monetary Unit)"
is not correct. EMU officially stands Economic and Monetary Union,"
which was the name of the project that resulted in the euro. If
you are interested in more euro information and debates, check
out Everson Typography.
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