Salon: Flag of Inconvenience | Linux Today

Salon: Flag of Inconvenience

Written By
Web Webster
Web Webster
Nov 2, 2002

[ Thanks to Doug Bostrom for
this link. ]

“On Oct. 2, Chang Chung-Yen, a Taiwanese Linux enthusiast, was
startled to find that his country had been erased. While fiddling
around with the desktop interface included with Red Hat Linux 8.0,
he discovered that no matter what he tried, he couldn’t get
Taiwan’s flag to show up when he configured the system for his
country and language.

“The KDE desktop included with Red Hat has excellent tools for
adapting the operating system for different languages, and Chang
was well familiar with them. A programmer who works for a
voice-over-IP company in Taiwan, Chang is a member of the Chinese
Linux Extension project, which provides a suite of Chinese add-ons
to GNU-Linux operating systems. He has also volunteered on a team
that works specifically on adapting KDE for Chinese use.

“He knew that when he picked out his country and language, a
window should pop up that would include a small image of Taiwan’s
flag next to the country’s name. And even though all the other
countries in the window had their flags readily apparent, when he
saw that Taiwan’s was missing, he first thought he must have made a
mistake. Maybe he’d forgotten to install some necessary piece of
the operating system…”


Complete Story

Web Webster

Web Webster

Web Webster has more than 20 years of writing and editorial experience in the tech sector. He’s written and edited news, demand generation, user-focused, and thought leadership content for business software solutions, consumer tech, and Linux Today, he edits and writes for a portfolio of tech industry news and analysis websites including webopedia.com, and DatabaseJournal.com.

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