Customer Reviews

Global Solutions for Multilingual Applications: Real-World Techniques for Developers and Designers

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It could simply be that I misread the publisher's description of this item and thought it was going to help me use the latest methods for localizing software ("techniques for developers") and that has led to my low rating of this title.

If you are a developer, you will find this book to be far to simple to be of any real use. I suggest Dave Taylor's "Global Software : Developing Applications for the International Market". It contains actual internationalization code techniques and ideas. It was unfortunately written in 1992 so doesn't talk about object oriented localization ideas or unicode 3.0. It does contain some great localization/internationalization methods.

If you need a book that will help you get a very basic understanding of localization and lots of pointers to on-line and off-line resources then "Global Solutions for Multilingual Applications" will be great for you. It contains great executive summaries on all topics related to using global software. For example, it describes exactly how to configure your mail handler (among other applications) to handle the non-ASCII character set and gives great overviews of translation and localization.

This is a surprisingly short book, given the subject matter. I was very disappointed at the lack of depth, especially since I own both Nadine Kano's book (found it on Amazon auctions!) and the CJK Information Processing tome by Ken Lund.

With the increased development of Java and Thin-Client web apps, developers are sorely in need of a book that details Industry standard methods of development in this area. This book is useless from this perspective. My advice: check out .... ; I found it far more useful as a resource.

Chris Ott has written Global Solutions for Multilingual Applications to encourage businesses, Webmasters, and IT managers to develop Website strategies that will address language and translation issues. Considering the number International sites that have gone online, many companies may find it wise to represent themselves online in such a manner that will effectively communicate to a variety of language and cultural groups. The results could be phenomenal!

This book addresses a number of issues specifically related to multilingual communication such as selective browser use, e-mail communication, multi-language word processors, using special font and character sets, international Web graphic image considerations, global writing, avoiding local or national assumptions such as addresses, and the pros and cons of creating either static or dynamic Websites.

Very few books discuss the matter of international and multilingual communications in as great detail as this one. There is no doubt that the world has been drawn closer together as the result of Internet access. Sooner or later changes will take place to facilitate unhindered global communications online. This book is must reading for those persons who want to begin making this possible now!