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I can confirm that text encoding is still a real pain in Japan. Despite the fact that we now have UTF-8, which should be used whenever possible, legacy encodings like SJIS, EUC, etc. still abound. For instance, whenever I download CSV bank or credit card data here in Japan, I always have to convert the file from one of those encodings before using it. At work in Tokyo, I deal with email in these encoding (or worse -- parts of the email in SJIS, with other parts in EUC). So yes, I think the barbaric text encodings of yesteryear are still a pain point for Japanese users. (Even so, I agree that it doesn't merit top billing in the window toolbar.) Off-topic bonus tip for aspiring text editor authors: make an awesome autocompletion UI, but leave the indexing/autocompletion up to third party open source plugins. Look at Chocolat.app for what the completion UI should look like (a big, attractive complex popover view (not just a menu) with optional documentation display), but open up the actual dynamic completion itself to your users. There is no way a small team can do good completion in tons of languages, but providing a great UI is totally doable. |
My advice to aspiring text editor authors would be: do development on the slowest most outdated computer you can find. I use a 2007 iMac: 2GHz, 3GB of RAM and a 128MB ATI Radeon 2400. If the app works OK for me, it should work awesomely for everybody else!