Attention to people who use newsgroups! (all others can probably ignore) 

I would like for people out there to prove me wrong.

Perhaps I should explain. :-)

As I have noted in the past, I keep an eye on some newsgroups. The current list I watch:

  1. microsoft.public.dotnet.internationalization
  2. microsoft.public.platformsdk.localization [no longer officially supported or monitored by Microsoft but I stay subscribed out of habit!]
  3. microsoft.public.platformsdk.mslayerforunicode [also no longer officially support as per here but I keep an eye on it]
  4. microsoft.public.win32.programmer.international
  5. microsoft.public.word.international.features

If you look at the traffic between all five of them, they hardly justify the creation of more than ONE newsgroup.

Now #1 and #3 and #5 were all added at various times at the behest of different people under the argument that people might find #4 to perhaps not apply to .NET, MSLU, or Word, respectively. In each case, the justification was made along the lines of confusion about where to post.

I won't disagree with the argument -- they are right. Though in my experience for the most part people are not shy about posting anyway saying "I was not sure where else to post this" and then they got their answers anyway.

I myself once made this argument and got #3 created myself. Though in retrospect I think I was wrong -- now the technology is not supported and the group is just this thing out there that is not very useful.

Anyway, some folks on the MUI team once again made the argument, this time feeling that people who were not programmers were not comfortable with microsoft.public.win32.programmer.international and that perhaps valuable interactions were not happening.

Like I said, I once made the argument, so I can't fault people too much for making it as well.

So there is now a new newsgroup: microsoft.public.windows.international, intended to cover more generally the features and bugs of Windows related to internationalization, localizability, globalization, MUI, typography, and so on.

Maybe it is not the very best possible name, and it hasn't gotten off to the very best start just yet (mostly people arguing about whether they should or can post in Russian?), but its intent was pure, and I'd really like to be proven wrong by the masses on this one.

So if you do use newsgroups and you have questions or comments or complaints or thoughts or kudos or whatever about the international features and/or bugs in Windows outside of the programmatic realm, then please consider posting there.

Every post will help prove me wrong. :-)

 

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