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by izacus 4265 days ago
It's one thing to internationalize software. That's hard. But not being able to handle UTF-8 in 21st century is downright shameful.

The notion of non-ASCII characters in user Excel documents IS NOT something rare even for English speaking nations. There are tons of people with foreign names, addresses and other personal information which is commonly stored in Excel documents. And the funny thing is: it's usually not alot of additional work to support UTF-8 if you START correctly.
2 comments
michaelmior 4265 days ago
Calling the work of someone who releases free software that they may have well hacked together in their free time downright shameful seems quite offensive and disregards the work they put into the project. Perhaps the OP had no need to use this code for non-English alphabets or is simply in the early stages and hasn't had the opportunity to fully test and implement this.

Regardless, I think people should be applauded for releasing their work instead of shamed. And of course, if it's not a lot of work, a pull request would likely be appreciated ;)

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izacus 4265 days ago
Hmm, I do not agree with you that the sole act of opensourcing a software should bring it above criticism. Any developer that takes a bit of pride in his work should at least keep himself to some minimal standards and I think supporting UTF-8 isn't an unreasonable baseline for software released right now.
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michaelmior 4265 days ago
A few snippets from the Show HN guidelines:

> A Show HN needn't be complicated or look slick. HN users are comfortable with work that's at an early stage.

> Be respectful. Anyone sharing work is making a contribution, however modest.

> When something isn't good, you needn't pretend that it is. But don't be gratuitously negative.

I'm not saying it people shouldn't be open to criticism, but I think terms such as downright shameful fall under the category of gratuitously negative.

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afarrell 4265 days ago
criticism != shaming
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gjkood 4265 days ago
Someone recently posted a thread referencing Teddy Roosevelt's quote on 'critics'. That seems to apply well here. http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/7-it-is-not-the-critic-who-c...
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