SERETNY@HARTFORD.BITNET (11/15/87)
Larry Virden, your messages ARE getting through (at least to lil' ol' me
here on Bitnet). As for the best way to do Chinese text, forget Big Blue, and
even your faithful Apple ][+; to really do things correctly, you'll need a
Macintosh (at least a Plus). It has a powerful Script Manager (built-on) which
will allow you to do almost any alphabet known to man (a version of Kanji
already exists).
Robert M. Seretny
(SERETNY@HARTFORD.bitnet)tsang@cory.Berkeley.EDU (Donald Tsang) (11/16/87)
In article <8711160051.aa14790@SMOKE.BRL.ARPA> SERETNY@HARTFORD.BITNET writes: > > As for the best way to do Chinese text, forget Big Blue, and >even your faithful Apple ][+; to really do things correctly, you'll need a >Macintosh (at least a Plus). It has a powerful Script Manager (built-on) which >will allow you to do almost any alphabet known to man (a version of Kanji >already exists). > Robert M. Seretny > (SERETNY@HARTFORD.bitnet) No no no!!!!! Chinese is NOT A LANGUAGE BUILT ON ALPHABETS!!!!!! (Calm down, Donald. You're shouting...) Oh, yeah. Umm... Chinese, as many should know, is a "pictographic" language, which uses standard and not-so-standard "roots" and extensions and other things to "build" words. From looking at a word, one would have no idea how to pronounce it... and vice versa. The programs I have heard of (for the Xerox, IBM, and even Mac) let you enter the words phoenetically, and it searches through a "dictionary" to find the proper "brush stroke" sequence. With over 2000 words in common usage, building an alphabet (one 50 x 50 pixel "letter" per word, 2000 words... 2500 x 2000 = 5 megabits, or over half a megabyte) would be ridiculous. Therefore, I am looking for a similar program on the Apple // series. My rationale: the GS should be able to handle anything the old Mac series could. Donald Tsang tsang@cory.Berkeley.EDU or [...]!ucbvax!cory!tsang