How about fixing nasty bugs instead of porting to any language in the world? I propose to start with the new addressbook in 4.5x and 4.6x. It´s nearly unusable especially in the Unix versions (e.g. Solaris).

The OS/2 port is being done by third-party coders, not Netscape developers.

i don't know how the 4.x codebase is set up, but if it was done even halfway properly, one needs not "port" an application to a new language.

the process is known as "localization", and one merely translates the text strings and puts them in the proper place; maybe there's a need for recompilation, sometimes not even that.

in any event, for any application that's already been translated even remotely well, doing it again is more a matter for translators than programmers. it should not steal much time from fixing bugs.

No unicode support, as a result no Hebrew, Arabic or other BiDi languages and Thai effort is a separate and tough effort. If communicator/mozilla would support unicode properly the problem would be non-existant. Right now, it is almost impossible to use Netscape to see sites in hebrew :(

Well in M7 I can select a Hebrew char set but on many webpages the Hebrew is backwards. Of course when I designed my website with Hebrew, I made sure that it wasn't backwards

Irish would be nice. Unfortunately, I am not a native speaker, nor do I have the resources. But if someone wants to jump in....

hey I betcha someone will do esperanto too

I have in mind certain languages that I might want to code out but I have no clue what kind of encoding scheme I want to use for hindi and kannada.

Really, this shouldn't be that exciting. Previous versions of Communicator (for Unix, anyway) had a `Netscape.ad' file, which you could edit at will to put Communicator into any language/dialect/slang you liked.

The only thing this new `functionality' [barf] does is to make it easier for LOTE (Language Other Than English) users to get to localized versions of Netscape or Netscape-sponsoring Web sites: Netcenter, My Netscape, or sites which pay Netscape for Internet Keywords. None of which I use anyway, and I would think I represent the great majority in that regard.

Oh well. Cé la vie. Kia kaha.

-- mpt

P.S.: All those who thought that that `Mozilla Services' proposal a few items ago was a good idea, *please* go back and read my rebuttal of it before you start coding/advocating it. Thanks.