tslu@oliveb.UUCP (Shang Lu) (10/08/86)
From mod.computers.ibm-pc ... > The most popular CHINESE CHARACTER PACKAGE so far is the KCCDS > system. You can mix English with Chinese characters, and it > supports lots popular software packages: LOTUS 1-2-3, DBASE III, > .....etc, I am sorry KCCDS is a typing error, it should be KCMDS. >> We looked at KCCDS. While a nice enough package, it has drawbacks. >> What killed it for us was its size -- since it takes about 280K to >> run, wasn't enough memory left over to run our application under >> it. I have been running KCMDS with some large programs for about 9 months, so far I don't have any problems yet. My clone PC has 512K and lots of clone dealers are selling PC with a standard 640K nowadays. Besides, the memory size KCMDS uses CAN be specified. >> While it does indeed allow you to run Lotus 1-2-3 (for instance), >> don't plan on having a spreadsheet of any reasonable size. In IBM PC, a byte is used to represent a single character, and each character has a corresponding display attribute. I am not sure about the display attribute in KCMDS, but each Chinese character takes only two bytes. Thus the spreadsheet size you can have is between 67% to 100% of the spreadsheet size you can have in English. >> ...... While KCMDS may be the 'most popular', >> DALT is the most widely-used -- over 40,000 installations (in China, >> Korea, Japan, and U.S. academic and government). It requires a >> Hercules graphics card, and at $965 it's not cheap, but... KCMDS has been on the market for less than a year. In Taiwan alone, it has over 10,000 installations, or 60% of the market. The population in China, Korea, Japan, and U.S. is around 100 times the population in Taiwan. The price of KCMDS is $140/$170 for PC/AT. I agree a Mercedes 450 is better than a Datsun, with 6 times the price. >> To begin with, it handles 11 languages (Chinese, simplified Chinese, >> Japanese [both Kana and Katakana], Korean, Thai, Russian, Greek, >> English, Arabic, Hebrew) KCMDS is designed for the bilingual market, the philosophy behind bilingual software is to provide a bridge between a non- prevailing language with the world's prevailing language -- English. I know people who understand 3 or 4 languages, but 11 is probably attractive for the United Nations or some reserach institutes. Manufacturer of KCMSD has helped develop other English/Whatever packages, the I don't think they have intention to combine bunch of non-prevailing languages. >> -- and actually does translation (both >> transliteration and grammatical processing), rather than merely 'word >> processing'. Additionally, it disambiguates input: if you enter >> "He looked at the girl with a telescope", it will ask (in whichever >> language was used for the input) who has the telescope -- the girl or >> the observer? That is a good feature, I do not think Lotus 1-2-3 or dBase III can do that either. Again, KCMDS is a GENERAL PURPOSE software, it is a bridge of Chinese to many popular softwares: Lotus, dBase, Lattice C, Turbo Pascal, PE, Multiplan, Sidekick, ... and many others. Does DALT do that too ? >> Next, it's hardware-based (comes with a 1/2-card), so it's not only >> faster but doesn't eat RAM. In fact, it'll run on a 256K machine, >> not that you'd want to do so. Hardware based may NOT necessarily mean it is faster. If the fonts are stored in EPROM, its access time may be 2 times slower than if the fonts are in RAM. KCMSD also runs on 256K machines. Back to the software/hardware issue, I do not think Lotus or dBase will be as popular if a "1-2-3 Hardware Card" or "dBase Hardware Card" is required to run the software. >> Rather than using stored bit-maps, characters are generated >> algorithmically ... KCMDS designers chose the bit-mapped technique because they want KCMDS to be upgradable to survive the fast technology evolution -- laser printing, desktop publishing, and more memory. Most languages with non-alphabetical graphic type characters are very delicated proportioned, only bit-mapped technique can survive the laser printing (or even the Epson LQ-800) technology. KCMDS is available from: Jumbo Software 264 North Whisman Road, Suite 16 Mt View, CA 94043