this is a significant problem. do you know *everybody* in japan uses lookout for email, internet exploder for internet... and so on, simply because all Microsoft's apps support the same japanese language 'standard'. Apparently there are three commonly used methods of putting japanese characters down electronically (and you thought the ascii/ibmwhateveritis thing was dumb!) and the one M$ uses is of course the most widely used because 'they make the system'.
Of course linux doesn't need to bother with proprietary Microsoft stuff 'cause it's usually closed and harder to deal with than proper open standards. This means that many Microsoft things get done last or not at all in linux programs and this is not good particularly for somebody who uses the M$ software already because of above reason.
My sister is still required to use lookout to email her japanese friends since no other email package (for windows, let alone linux) supports japanese in the way that her friends' shitty windows/outlook/IE boxes do. She needs to use IE to view any links her japanese friends send her, since japanese sites are made using frontpage excess, or are coded specifically for IE, and really this is a market that, were linux a company, they would have dealt with a long time ago.
What are Turbolinux, the linux vendor that caters specifically to Asia, doing about this i wonder?
http://www.turbolinux.com/http://www.turbolinux.co.jp/
