Text 18573, 160 rader
Skriven 2005-12-12 22:25:00 av FRANK SCHEIDT (1:123/140)
     Kommentar till en text av MICHIEL VAN DER VLIST
Ärende: Web Site
================
-=> Quoting Michiel Van Der Vlist to Frank Scheidt <=-

 >> BTW, in a different vein.  I checked out your web site

 MVDV>> You are from Detroit?
 
 > No

 MVDV> But you use an ISP in Detroit?

No.  I use Earthlink, which has world-wide Internet access sites.
 
 >> and found it quite interesting.

 MVDV>> Thank you. It still needs a lot of work I think....
 
 > "Personal" websites created by an individual are *never* finished.

 MVDV> How true. I intend to at least change the picture on the front page
 MVDV> from time to time. The one that is there now was made at the end of
 MVDV> october. It was the last time this year I mowed the lawn.
 
It's amazing what a difference seeing a photograph of an 
individual makes.  You don't look at *all* like I had envisioned.  
However I've found that to be a common phenomenon.  One can 
hardly be expected to know what an individual looks like merely 
by reading his words.  I now look upon you as a fellow 
human-being rather than basically a bunch of stubborn pixels ... 
heh heh heh ...

 >> I was surprised to see it written in Dutch though I certainly
 >> shouldn't have been -- after all that's your language.

 MVDV>> Indeed. It is my language and the language of my friends and family
 MVDV>> and they are my primary audience.
 
 > Of course ... in a way I was an "intruder" ...

 MVDV> Well, one can hardly call you an "intruder" for visiting a website
 MVDV> that is advertised and open to the public.

That's why I said "in a way".  Your website is designed for 
people you know *personally* -- like a personal photo album.

 MVDV>> Most websites here are in Dutch.
 
 > I would expect that ...

 MVDV> Of course... ;-)

 MVDV>> I am still looking for a way to make it bilangual without
 MVDV>> having to duplicate every page. I know how to do that in a
 MVDV>> "normal" programming language such as assembler, Fortran
 MVDV>> or C, but I have not yet found an easy way in HTML.
 
 > I have software which will translate websites in many languages.
 > I don't know if Dutch is included I'll have to track it down.

 MVDV> That does not fullfil my needs. What I want is a method to make
 MVDV> changes without having to make the same change for each langauge
 MVDV> version. In a "real" programming language one does that by instead of
 MVDV> saying display "Good day"" to say display text #1".

That wouldn't meet *your* needs but it would meet mine.

 MVDV> And then add an offset for other languages. So text #1 points to "Good
 MVDV> day" and text #101 points to "Goedendag", text #201 to "Bon jour". Etc,
 MVDV> Etc. 

 MVDV> The problem is that HTML does not seem to support arrays.

That reminds me of problems I encountered many years ago when 
programming.  I started using a language -- I think it was Basic 
-- which supported only *two*-dimensional arrays.  That made life 
a bit difficult for what I wanted to do.  That was years ago and 
I no-longer recall what I *was* doing with it.

 MVDV>> The website is hand coded BTW.
 >
 >> Even in Dutch, though, most of the meanings could be deciphered.
 >> There are some similarities between Dutch and German which helps.

 MVDV> But Dutch isn't a dialect of German. Appearances can be deceptive.

I guess since it's located close to Germany I had *assumed* the 
two languages had a lot of similarities.  Actually that makes 
little sense as France, too, is close to Germany but my knowledge 
of German didn't help me in my learning to study French -- 
technical French.

 MVDV> There are many words that look and sound very alike in German and Ducth
 MVDV> but that have completely different meaning.

That *would* be confusing.  When I'd run into some 
foreign-language article in a language which *looked* somewhat like 
German but was "screwed-up" I assumed it was Dutch and moved on 
...

 MVDV>> You can read German?
 
 > I studied German in college since, at that time, most of the
 > chemical literature was in that language.  I also studied
 > literary German.  I learned to read technical German pretty
 > well.  In fact that's how I can spot Dutch -- aside from
 > Dutch-based web sites which I'd expect to be in Dutch --
 > Dutch always appears to me like German but something is
 > seriously wrong ... heh heh heh ...

 MVDV> It looks seriously wrong because the similarities are only
 MVDV> superficial. A Dutchman who has never been confronted with German
 MVDV> before will not be able to communicate with a German who has never been
 MVDV> confronted with Dutch. Dutch and German really are different languages.

OK.  I had assumed there were a lot of similarities.  BTW, did you 
know that in the U.S., calling someone living here a "Dutchman" 
usually means he's of *German* ancestry, not Dutch?  Of course, 
to further confuse the issue, if he's of Dutch descent he might 
*also* be referred to as a "Dutchman".  Very confusing ... unless 
one assumes the Netherlands and Germany are the same nation.

 MVDV> For a Dutchman to *properly* learn German is very difficult. The
 MVDV> grammar is completely different. For me it was a nightmare.

German grammer is also very different than English which 
causes problems in understanding.  One feature of German which 
is rare in English is the habit of combining several words 
into one, long, single-word.  I found that more interesting than 
confusing, but it drives some English-speakers nuts.

 MVDV>> Did you understand what the page about the small trailer was about?
 
 > Other than realizing "Caravan" probably means "trailer" in
 > Dutch, not really.

 MVDV> Well, yes. A "caravan" is a mobile home with a means of propulsion. It
 MVDV> is meant to be towed. You can see mine in a couple of pictures on my
 MVDV> site. 

 MVDV> But when I mentioned "the small trailer" I was referring to the little
 MVDV> green trailer on the subbpage "mistlamp op de kar". I was wondering if
 MVDV> you had figuered out what that was all about...

No.  Unfortunately my translator doesn't work with Dutch.  There 
seems to be a lot of talk about dimensions, but that's really no 
help.  However I *do* admire the license plates which, unlike 
*ours*, would be exceedingly easy to read.

 MVDV>> Or the one about the the SpeedTouch?

Other than it appears to be a circuit board, nothing ... [sigh] 
... 
 > No, but I intend re-checking the site ...

 MVDV> By all means, be my guest.

... Christmas time will soon be here by golly/disapproval would be folly

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