OK, I’ll let a mod worry about whether this would be better in CS. Here’s possibly the strangest request you’ll read today:
I need to be able to type valid text in languages I don’t speak or read.
Here’s the background: I write software, and I’ve noticed an increasing trend in my users toward Europe and Asia. Now as an American, I’m aware that all foreign-born individuals speak English, or at least LOUD ENGLISH. I nevertheless desire to support them using their own language when using my software. (I’m talking about the stuff they type into it; not localization of the software itself, which I can pay someone to do.)
I’ve done the easy parts, converted to Unicode everywhere and let the system APIs do as much of my text layout as possible. But there are still things I need to test, particularly in non-roman, ideographic, right-to-left, and vertically written languages, using the standard mechanisms for typing in those languages. Think Arabic, Chinese, Korean, Hebrew, non-romanized Japanese, etc.
Problem is, I can type gibberish, but I never know if it’s working. So what I’m looking for is:
Simple phrases. The exact keypresses you’d use on a US keyboard to produce the phrase, what it should look like, and what language it’s in.
Bonus points for telling me what it means, and since it may get used in screen shots, please keep it neutral. If there’s some subtlety that I might miss (certain parts of the glyph forms have to line up, say), I’d love hints for that, too.
I’m collecting these in as many languages as possible. My software is cross-platform, so either/both Macintosh (OS X) and Windows (2000/XP) is useful. Note that I’m looking for what the OS installed as that system accepts as default (in a text field, for example), not how to use a specific program.
