nmm2@quads.uchicago.edu (nathaniel marinus mccully) (05/03/91)
In article <1991May3.140213.11381@milton.u.washington.edu> jonwd@milton.u.washington.edu (Jon Wiederspan) writes: >The answer from Apple is that there will never be a KanjiTalk 7.0 . That Wrong. They are working on it as we speak. The current upgrade version will be KanjiTalk 6.1, with TrueType support for all 7,000 characters. 7.0 will come after that. Notice how the revs have been coming faster and faster, as demand for parity between systems has grown. System 6.x went through 5 versions just last year. Expect 7.0-J sooner than you think, along with qualified support to the user. >means, of course, that they have no idea yet how many years it will take. >As far as I can tell, this is because KanjiTalk is a kludge (patch, hack) >in the first place, and System 7.0 won't allow it. The entire KanjiTalk >package would have to be rewritten. Well, if they're going to do that, >hopefully they will take their time and incorporate something like the >Unicode system (which is itself still years away, I guess). > System 7.0 does allow a patch for unicode. That is one of the things that is holding its rollout up. KanjiTalk has already been completely re-written for version 6.1, along with a new international version of 32-bit Quickdraw that can handle 2-byte character sets (for TrueType). >So don't hold your breath, although it might help to send letters to Apple >letting them know how little you think of their support of KanjiTalk. It's >bad enough that they won't really begin distributing it in the States until >the english System 7.0 is out already. Apple has already started shipping KanjiTalk out to the dealers who support it. SystemSoft has many third-party packages in stock and ready to go out via next-day air. The same cannot be said about 7.0 English. >Let them know that you are tired >of switching systems to do your work! Better yet, tell them you're selling >your Mac to buy a Unix machine (a Sun!) so you can get some REAL work done. > >NOTE: OK, this hasn't been an official announcement. It has, however, >been corroborated by two Apple employees, an Aldus employee who's job it >is to know these things about Apple, and a one-time Apple programmer who >still has friends there. I'd like to know who your friends are, because they should get their info straight, from people actually involved in the USA distribution project. Questions? Mail me! I mean nothing personal by the above editorial. -- !!\\ !! !!\\ //!! Dept. of EALC !! \\ !! !! \ / !! Univ. of Chicago !! \\ !! !! v !! c/o SHINNOSUKE !! \\!! AT !! !! cCULLY ===> nmm2@midway.uchicago.edu