lei@ttidca.TTI.COM (Mary Lei) (11/03/87)
I read from the November 2nd issue of Business week that next year San Diego based China Business Machines will announce a Chinese wordprocessor and computer that mimics the brush strokes of Chinese character writing. Anyone have more information on this?
oster@dewey.soe.berkeley.edu (David Phillip Oster) (11/05/87)
In article <1423@ttidca.TTI.COM> lei@ttidca.TTI.COM (Mary Lei) writes: >I read from the November 2nd issue of Business week that next year >San Diego based China Business Machines will announce a >Chinese wordprocessor and computer that mimics the brush strokes of >Chinese character writing. Anyone have more information on this? I don't understand what the big deal is here. Apple periodically issues free updates of its system software. Two upgrades ago the system software was augmented with a new sub-system called the "script manager" that lets the macintosh handle non-roman character sets. If you have the Chinese language interface module on your system (available for about $50.00 from APDA.), then you can use the Apple standard tool ResEdit to convert an arbitrary application into chinese (For example you can convert all of Excel's menus, dialogs, and error messages to Chinese.) Script manager compatible word processors, such as Macintosh Microsoft Word 3.01, let you mix English and Chinese (and as many other language interface systems as you have on your system) on the same line. The way the Mac operating system works, you can directly use Chinese in graphics and page layout programs, and print it from any application to any printer. Seems kind of dumb to wait a year for vaporware from San Diego when you could be working on a Macintosh today. I personally haven't seen the Chinese language interface system. I only own a copy of the Arabic and the Kanji language interface systems. --- David Phillip Oster --A Sun 3/60 makes a poor Macintosh II. Arpa: oster@dewey.soe.berkeley.edu --A Macintosh II makes a poor Sun 3/60. Uucp: {uwvax,decvax,ihnp4}!ucbvax!oster%dewey.soe.berkeley.edu
cs313s02@uhccux.UUCP (Cs313s02) (11/06/87)
In article <21601@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU> oster@dewey.soe.berkeley.edu.UUCP (David Phillip Oster) writes: >In article <1423@ttidca.TTI.COM> lei@ttidca.TTI.COM (Mary Lei) writes: >>I read from the November 2nd issue of Business week that next year >>San Diego based China Business Machines will announce a >>Chinese wordprocessor and computer that mimics the brush strokes of >>Chinese character writing. Anyone have more information on this? >I don't understand what the big deal is here. Apple periodically >issues free updates of its system software. > [ More nonsense about using convert all applications to Chinese > via Mac's ResEdit deleted ] Sure, using ResEdit is fine if you're just going to be working with a few Chinese characters. But to be a useful system, you need at least 50% of all Chinese characters in there. I suspect the practical limit of doing Chinese characters this way is about 5% of all Chinese characters. >Script manager compatible word processors, such as Macintosh Microsoft >Word 3.01, let you mix English and Chinese (and as many other language >interface systems as you have on your system) on the same line. This one is a bigger joke. Imagine how easy it is to select one character, out of the several thousands of Chinese characters possible. Sure it's possible, but it's not at all practical. I think I'd rather write everything out by hand (not that I remember how... :-). >Seems kind of dumb to wait a year for vaporware from San Diego when >you could be working on a Macintosh today. It'll more dumb to try something like this on a Mac. Unless the designers of Mac had Chinese in mind when they designed the machine (which I highly doubt), no thanks to Mac. And besides, several Chinese word processors are available for PCs, and even Apple IIs. >I personally haven't seen the Chinese language interface system. >I only own a copy of the Arabic and the Kanji language interface systems. There are lot more Chinese characters than Arabic and Kanji combined. Again, it might be tolerable for a small character set, but not a workable Chinese character set. Besides, I don't think this is what Mary Lei was really asking about. Emulating the brush strokes of a character is not simply putting the strokes into vectors. This is not a flame, but just to point out some inaccuracies in you reply. >--- David Phillip Oster --A Sun 3/60 makes a poor Macintosh II. >Arpa: oster@dewey.soe.berkeley.edu --A Macintosh II makes a poor Sun 3/60. >Uucp: {uwvax,decvax,ihnp4}!ucbvax!oster%dewey.soe.berkeley.edu -- Yuan Chang (currently using a stupid student account) UUCP: {ihnp4,uunet,ucbvax,dcdwest}!sdcsvax!nosc!uhccux!cs313s02 ARPA: uhccux!cs313s02@nosc.MIL "Wouldn't you like to INTERNET: cs313s02@uhccux.UHCC.HAWAII.EDU be an _A_m_i_g_o_i_d too?!?