kosower@harvard.UUCP (David A. Kosower) (01/20/86)
I'm curious as to what formatters and what laser printers non-English
speaking (and writing...) folks on the net use. Newer formatters (e.g.
Scribe and TeX) give somewhat more thought to handling non-English text,
and in TeX at least, one can build macro packages that make typing (say)
French relatively straightforward even with a "standard" American
keyboard: e.g. you would type "'ecole", "h^otel", etc. Laser-printer
manufacturers [the software is almost inevitably American even if the
engine is Japanese] have allowed for non-American, and in some cases
(Xerox) non-Latin character sets. Hence the following questionnaire,
directed at those people on the net who have to deal with a substantial
amount of non-English text (I would prefer responses in English, though :-):
1) What formatters do you use (if any)? Have you used Scribe or TeX?
2) If you are using an American-designed formatter, what problems
have you run into when producing documents in a foreign language,
problems that you feel would NOT have arisen in producing an
English document?
3) How widespread are laser printers at your institution/company?
If you have laser printers, which manufacturer's? How does their
output compare with professionally-printed or typeset output produced
by a local print shop? (Note: "Book-quality" typesetting is generally
thought to demand a resolution of 1400 lpi or so; laser printers are
usually 300 to 450. I'm interested in hearing in comparisons overlooking
the difference in resolutions, e.g. "My language doesn't look pretty
with the fonts the laser printer manufacturer gave me", etc.)
Please respond to me (via mail), not directly to the net.
If the volume of responses merits a summary to the net, I shall make
one.
David A. Kosower
kosower@harvard.Harvard.Edu