Backwards Names and Other Tidbits
I’ve been hard at work creating a bunch of localized versions of MemoryMiner. Doing European versions is pretty straightforward, no code changes, just a quick double check of the date formats here and there.
Doing Asian languages is a different story. The biggest issue is the order in which “first” and “last” names appear. Simply put, it’s the opposite of what one uses in Western languages. No huge deal, but it did require a few code changes in order to determine that the user’s preferred system language is “Asian” (e.g. one of “ko”, “Japanese”, “zh_TW” or “zh_CN”) and then reversing the display order for a person’s full name. There’s also the order of the entry fields, and the sort ordering of the People table, to say nothing of finding a decent map server that works with two-byte characters and has coverage in Asian countries.
In other happy news, work on the Flash export system got a huge boost in the arm now that we’ve begun collaborating with a company called Metaliq. I have to say they’re by far the most professional Flash development house I’ve come across, and Punk Mommy and I looked high and low. I’m honored to have the chance to work a fellow named Beau. Here’s a sample of some of Metaliq’s work:
http://video2.spreadfirefox.com
Can’t wait to unleash the stuff we’re working on with MemoryMiner. It really will be cool. I promise.
February 22nd, 2006 at 7:13 am
John
Regarding the ordering of the First name/last name, rather than automatically selecting the sequence base on the language, it might be better to add a drop down list to let user select something like sorting sequence “Last name, First name”, “Fist name, last name”.
February 22nd, 2006 at 9:39 am
HI David:
A fine idea, and very easy to do.
John