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Technology Stocks : How high will Microsoft fly? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Jordan A. Sheridan who wrote (56892)	3/28/2001 12:40:40 AM
From: dybdahl	Respond to of 74651

There is no doubt, that Microsoft works toward a localization situation, where the same .exe file is used in all languages, instead of compiling one .exe file for each language. This would solve the problem, and would also solve the stability problem, when you install English language programs on localized Windows versions. Programs translated using Borland Delphi already work this way, and, hm, Linux also works this way. If we translate a program using Delphi, we could get the following files: program.exe (original program, can run by itself in English) program.dan (Danish translation) program.deu (German translation) program.nor (Norwegian translation) etc. It's the same .exe file all the time, and the translation files only contain translated text and objects. This is a very stable situation, and also works on dlls and other executables. It is even possible to run the same program with different languages at the same time: At startup, it just checks the Windows settings and chooses a suitable translation file. Linux also works that way, and I anticipate, that Microsoft software goes that direction, too. When the same executable file is used on all languages, there will only be one compiled version of any version number, one file date, and there will not be doubts about when to upgrade the executable or not, and patches will be available in all languages immediately. Linux and Windows are different and have each their strengths. Linux has been multi-user, multi-language, multi-timezone (!), IPv6 compatible etc. for quite some time. Windows has been much easier to configure and a lot of other benefits compared to Linux. It's a world with two very different operating systems in direct competition, and it's Microsoft's job to earn money on delivering af product that their customers think is better than Linux. Lars.