[net.micro.mac] Japanese Characters on Mac?

woodson@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU (Chas Woodson) (11/11/85)

Does anyone have a program to display Japanese characters?
How about a wordprocessor using them?
Is anybody working on same?
.

thinfilm@uicsl.UUCP (11/14/85)

Cannon and apple had a joint project that was to have been completed
by the end of this year, but unfortunately the project was canceled
due to the fact that they decided that the japanese roms necessary
along with the driving software would make the mac incompatible with
the unaltered mac.   ZThere are however japanese packages sold in japan
for the mac as my friend there has one.

sumacc@uwmacc.UUCP (Rick Keir) (11/14/85)

Try "MacKana and Basic Kanji" fonts.  Linguists' Software, Box 231
Mt. Hermon, CA 95041.  (617) 468-3037.  (This is different
than the phone listed on some of their ads).  List price $100,
I've seen it advertised for $75.  (These are FONTS, not
a word processor.  You  still are typing left to right, not
top down/right left.)

They also make Hebrew, Tech, Greek and Cyrillic fonts.
They have an international phonetic alphabet which I'm thinking
about buying, since I'm having trouble getting a daisywheel
with these characters.

Usual disclaimer -- I just use their stuff, I don't work for them.
-- 
Rick Keir -- MicroComputer Information Center, Rm 3130 MACC
1210 West Dayton St/U Wisconsin Madison/Mad WI 53706
{allegra, ihnp4, seismo}!uwvax!uwmacc!sumacc	(OR) uwvax!uwmacc!rick 

bantz@uiucuxc.CSO.UIUC.EDU (11/19/85)

Linguist's Software sells MacKana/Basic Kanji, fonts for the Mac.
I haven't seen this product (and couldn't properly evaluate it if I had),
but I have seen MacGreek from them; MacGreek is pretty nice: it doesn't 
merely have the Greek alphabet, but all the required breathing and 
accent marks, which in (ancient) Greek can be *combined* to produce some
pretty messy-looking characters.  Fonts included several sizes, and bold 
and italics works too.  For $69 through MacConnection.

sas1@sphinx.UChicago.UUCP (Stuart Schmukler) (11/19/85)

There is a Japanese WP for the Mac called EgWord.  I saw it at MacExpo --
working well (but since I don't know Japanese I'm no judge).

Also, I am not sure who the US distributor is.

SaS

thinfilm@uicsl.UUCP (11/20/85)

  I wrote a short note before and forgot to p sign it.  I have a japanese
friend who has a 512K mac and helped him do some research on getting a
true japanese word processor (ie. that supports a few thousand kanji like
the NEC PC-100 that I have at home does - ie. to a japanese a word 
processor without a few thousand kanji is of little practical value and
is more of a toy).  In any case the linguist software is an alternate font
that fits in the space previously defined for other fonts.  As such it
is much smaller a selection than that which is needed.  One could write
notes in kana, but this is not really adequate either.  I am sure that 
there are japanese word processors for the mac in Japan.   I will write
(actually I will go) and find out their names.  They probably are not
distributed here though (there is no market).

Paul Fons
{ihnp4,pur-ee}!uiucdcs!uicsl!thinfilm
Coordinated Science Lab
1101 W. Springfield
Urbana, IL. 61801

haruyama@ut-sally.UUCP (Shinichiro Haruyama) (11/20/85)

> Does anyone have a program to display Japanese characters?
> How about a wordprocessor using them?
> Is anybody working on same?


     A Japanese start up company called Ergonomics  Software
Products  International Corporation in Tokyo announced a new
Japanese word processor "EgWord" ( which is pronounced "easy
word" ) this summer.

     It does not require any hardware change  to  Macintosh.
Since  there is a one to one correspondence between Japanese
Kanas and English alphabets, a user can use a regular alpha-
bet  keyboard to input Japanese text. The input is displayed
on a Mac screen either by Katakanas,  Hirakanas,  or  alpha-
bets.   Usually  Kanjis  which  are  very similar to Chinese
characters have more than one pronunciations.  When  a  user
wants to use kanjis rather than kanas, he/she can let Mac do
the conversion from kanas to kanjis. I have used EgWord  and
found that the conversion was quite fast: just a few seconds
for a text which contains about one hundred kanji words. The
accuracy of conversion is also very good.

     This software comes with three disks: a system disk,  a
font disk.  and a dictionary disk and can be obtained either
from Ergonomics Software Products International  Corporation
or from Canon in Tokyo.

     Ergonomics Software Products International  Corporation
is  selling  another Japanese softwares for Macintosh called
EgBridge. Using EgBridge a user can use many  American  made
Mac  softwares  such  as  Mac Paint, Multiplan, and MS-Chart
with Japanese characters.

     This  September,  Canon  announced   Dyna   Mac   which
accelerates  EgWord,  by using a ROM which contains Japanese
font patterns.  This speeds up the display  of  texts  on  a
screen or on a printer, though a hardware change is needed.

     The address of Ergonomics  Software  Products  Interna-
tional Corporation is

Taneda Bldg., 5F. 1-2-5 Moto-Akasaka,  Minato-ku  Tokyo  107
Japan.
Tel. (Japan) 3-478-2234.

     I do not work for either Ergonomics  Software  Products
International Corporation or Canon.

                    Shinichiro Haruyama
                    The University of Texas at Austin