[sword-devel] search idea, English tags

[Johnny Stovall PhD]

At 07:55 AM 1/15/2000 GMT, darwin@ichristian.com  wrote:
>
>Another issue that just came to mind is that assuming that <book title> is
>better to read/write than <bt> assumes knowledge of English.  I have startd
>to become sensitive to the network comments that an "English only"
>philosophy is arrogant.  Perhaps we would be better served using short
>acronyms where some language neutrality is acheived.
>
>   Darwin Gregory
In 1971, I baptized some people in a remote Indonesian village who had never
heard the words Jesus or Christ before I came to their village.  They also
had great difficulty reading the Indonesian language or their own tribal
language.  Today that and many other villages like it have satelite receivers
for television and they are usually very interested in receiving English
language broadcasts especially with subtitles to help them learn more English.
At a meeting of several hundred Indonesian programmers put on by a major SW
vendor, all of these Indonesians said that they wanted the documentation in 
English.  There are always pros & cons.  I think we should go with the trend
which leads to the greatest understanding of the truth.  English is certainly
the trend although Indonesian is easier and Greek is much better designed.
Greek is also usually shorter and more concise than English.  For me
personally,
I would much rather have the tags in Greek.  If they were in Greek, those of
you who don't now know it would start to learn it and those who know it would
improve but only if it were words not acronyms.  Greek acronyms would cause 
a great amount of confusion for everyone.  English acronyms would cause more
confusion than words.  God is not the author of confusion.  (You will find it
in the OT with a good search program.)

For Truth & understanding,
John Stovall, Director
Dr Stovall Foundation