[R] L10N and i18n of R

[Shigeru Mase]

Dear R-users of non-English speaking countires.

Maybe a good news for those who want to use R in their
local languages. Recently two Japanese, E. Nakama and
M. Okada, succeeded in "making R speak Japanese". At
present, R can handle Japanese (as well as other languages,
I guess) character strings if one use consoles which
can understand Japanese. Also P. Murrell kindly
provided a facility to plot hundreads of Japaense
characaters as graphical symbols (Hershey vector fonts).

Nakama and Okada's "L10N" (Localization) and "i18n"
(internationalization) patches make it possible to
use Japanese object names and to display Japanese
characters on graphical devices (although still limited).
If you are interested, please visit URL:

http://www.okada.jp.org/RWiki/index.php?%5B%5Bi18n_of_R%5D%5D

which is the only English page of RjpWiki, a Wiki-based
collaboration site supported by Japanese R users.

Nakama's patches can also handle other languages
than Japanese. He kindly built Korean and Russian
version of R (1.7.1) as rpm binaries (although
he can understand neither Korean nor Russian).

We are glad if these patches can give hints to R
users who want to use local languages. Please note
their patches are by no means complete and may
potentially give your systems troubles. They and
related binaries are offered without no warranty.
Feedbacks and reports are welcome, but mere inquiries
and complains not. Since the version up of R is so
frequent, we cannot promise that these patches will
be updated in future.

Yours
------------------------------------------------
Shigeru Mase
Dept. Math. and Comp. Sciences,
Tokyo Institute of Technology, Tokyo, Japan