rja@edison.GE.COM (rja) (03/06/88)
While I agree that HP-UX is nice and it does have stuff from BSD it only passes SVVS/SVID for Unix System V.2.2 . The current release of Sys V is at least V.3.1 and there have been big additions. For example streams and support for International character systems. HP does have variants of HP-UX for international character support but in a proprietary and non-V.3.1 compatible fashion. If you use their international scheme you get locked into their systems, losing vendor independence. Personnally, I prefer the V.3.1 international character support method for various technical reasons, but expect that this verges on being a religious issue and so will stop at that. This isn't intended as a flame, but rather an expression of frustration at the unclear reference to SVVS and SVID compatibility in HP's print advertising, etc. I actually like HP for other things.
decot@hpisod2.HP.COM (Dave Decot) (03/09/88)
> Personnally, I prefer the V.3.1 international character support method > for various technical reasons, but expect that this verges on being > a religious issue and so will stop at that. This isn't intended as a flame, > but rather an expression of frustration at the unclear reference to SVVS and > SVID compatibility in HP's print advertising, etc. I actually like HP for > other things. I wouldn't mind hearing what technical reasons you have for preferring the V.3.1 character support method. Various standards bodies are currently wrestling with this issue. In the future, I'll be more specific in my references to SVID and SVVS and let our marketing organizations know that they should do the same. Dave Decot hpda!decot
wk@hpirs.HP.COM (Wayne Krone) (03/09/88)
> / hpirs:comp.unix.wizards / rja@edison.GE.COM (rja) / 7:22 am Mar 6, 1988 / > > While I agree that HP-UX is nice and it does have stuff from BSD > it only passes SVVS/SVID for Unix System V.2.2 . The current release > of Sys V is at least V.3.1 and there have been big additions. For example > streams and support for International character systems. HP does have > variants of HP-UX for international character support but in a > proprietary and non-V.3.1 compatible fashion. If you use their international > scheme you get locked into their systems, losing vendor independence. If vendor independence is what you are after, I suggest following the guidelines published in the Internationalization section of the X/Open Portability Guide. The internationalization defined by X/Open was derived from the HP Native Language Support (NLS) product and is now available from many of the X/Open member companies, including HP and AT&T. Wayne Krone Hewlett-Packard
rja@edison.GE.COM (rja) (03/10/88)
I had mentioned problems with International language support with HP-UX. I've been corrected by the folks at HP, who say that they are in fact X/OPEN compatible. I accept this as true. I should have been clearer in saying that my concerns lay mostly in the Japanese/Chinese arena. Now, it's been a little while since I wrote my thesis on Chinese/Japanese computer systems and I admit up front that things might have changed. The new question is, is HP-UX in full conformance with all of the Japanese JIS standards ?? Compatible with the AT&T Sys V NLS, which seems to have many vendors supplying conformant products ?? I suspect that this discussion is now too specific for the newsgroup. If you agree, please use e-mail. :-) rja@edison.GE.COM or ...!uunet!virginia!edison!rja
mlight@hpiacla.HP.COM (Mike Light ) (03/17/88)
> I had mentioned problems with International language support with HP-UX. > I've been corrected by the folks at HP, who say that they are in fact > X/OPEN compatible. I accept this as true. I should have been clearer > in saying that my concerns lay mostly in the Japanese/Chinese arena. > The new question is, is HP-UX in full conformance with all of the Japanese > JIS standards ?? Compatible with the AT&T Sys V NLS, which seems to have > many vendors supplying conformant products ?? Unfortunately we don't conform to JIS. HP merged support of Katakana (phonetic language) with a "subset" of JIS characters to produce a monster known as "HP-15". HP may get its butt kicked for it later. To the best of my knowledge, we are conformant with AT&T's SysV NLS. -- Mike Light (HP: Industrial Applications Center) hpda!hpiacla!mlight
wk@hpirs.HP.COM (Wayne Krone) (03/18/88)
> I had mentioned problems with International language support with HP-UX. > I've been corrected by the folks at HP, who say that they are in fact > X/OPEN compatible. I accept this as true. I should have been clearer > in saying that my concerns lay mostly in the Japanese/Chinese arena. > The new question is, is HP-UX in full conformance with all of the Japanese > JIS standards ?? Compatible with the AT&T Sys V NLS, which seems to have > many vendors supplying conformant products ?? > > rja@edison.GE.COM or ...!uunet!virginia!edison!rja and > Unfortunately we don't conform to JIS. HP merged support of Katakana > (phonetic language) with a "subset" of JIS characters to produce > a monster known as "HP-15". HP may get its butt kicked for it later. > > -- Mike Light (HP: Industrial Applications Center) > hpda!hpiacla!mlight This is not correct. HP-15 is a superset of Shift-JIS which supports all the characters defined by JIS C-6220 and JIS C-6226. Shift-JIS has become the de facto standard on personal computers in Japan and is used by a number of suppliers of UNIX(*) operating systems as can be seen in the following list: ------------------- Kanji UNIX in Japan (as of ~Jan 87) ------------------- Yokogawa Hewlett Packard - HP15 (superset of Shift JIS) Sony - Shift JIS Toshiba - JIS C-6226 AT&T Pacific - JAE EUC (JIS C-6226 + JIS C-6220) Data General Japan - original DEC Japan - Dec Kanji code (similar to AT&T Pacific) Sharp - JIS C-6226 NCR Japan - Shift JIS Hitachi - Shift JIS NEC - JIS C-6226 Mitsubishi - EBCDIC Panafacom (Matushita + Fujitsu) - original (similar to JIS C-6226) ASCII - Shift JIS Both HP's and AT&T's NLS products have two sides: a set of proprietary features and a set of standard (X/Open, ANSI, etc.) features. HP, AT&T and others are devoting significant resources to the task of making many of the proprietary features part of standards which we can all then support in our implementations. Through X/Open and /usr/group internationalization efforts, quite a lot of progress has been made in the area of supporting Western-European based languages. We are just beginning to address the needs of Asian languages (see, for example, the multibyte support in the latest ANSI-C draft). The problem with code sets, however, is that there is an over abundance of standards to choose from. Each has their advantages and disadvantages for a particular implementation and set of users. HP-15, for example, can support a larger number of kanji characters than AT&T's JAE EUC. Whether or not this is significant depends upon the needs of each company's set of customers. On the other hand, EUC requires less modification of UNIX commands because the code set values for ASCII characters are never used as part of a multibyte kanji character. Whether or not this is significant depends upon the resources available to internationalize the commands. Looking ahead, my personal opinion is that vendors will probably come to support several of the currently competing code sets as a means of expanding their pool of potential customers. The ultimate solution may be a global code set that simultaneously supports all world's languages. Joe Becker of XEROX presented the basis of such a code set at a recent /usr/group Internationalization meeting. Wayne Krone Hewlett-Packard NLS Project * UNIX is a registered trademark of AT&T
irf@kuling.UUCP (Bo Thide) (03/25/88)
In article <4760011@hpirs.HP.COM> wk@hpirs.HP.COM (Wayne Krone) writes: >features and a set of standard (X/Open, ANSI, etc.) features. HP, AT&T >and others are devoting significant resources to the task of making >many of the proprietary features part of standards which we can all >then support in our implementations. Through X/Open and /usr/group >internationalization efforts, quite a lot of progress has been made in >the area of supporting Western-European based languages. We are just >beginning to address the needs of Asian languages (see, for example, >the multibyte support in the latest ANSI-C draft). There is one major problem with HPs own NLS and the X/Open standard: X/Open defines the ISO 8859 character set(s) as the 8-bit ASCII characters for European languages whereas HP has chosen their own propietary sets (ROMAN8, TURKISH8 etc..) and this is causing A LOT of problems when you want to implement NLS in Swedish (and Finnish, Norwegian, Danish, German ...)! It's a pity that such a great system like NLS on HPs can only be used together with HPs own printers, terminals etc. Reportedly VT200s nowadays have ISO 8859-1 characters as an option. Our secretaries don't like this confusion (neither do they like the idea that you have to hit two keys to get an umlaut-o, that is, an o with two dots on top, on HP terminals). Fortunately, there might be a way out of this impasse: the xkeymap facility in X Windows. We use X Windows, UNIX editors and TeX with previers for producing scientific report and articles. -- >>> Bo Thide', Swedish Institute of Space Physics, S-755 90 Uppsala, Sweden <<< Phone (+46) 18-300020. Telex: 76036 (IRFUPP S). UUCP: ..enea!kuling!irfu!bt