sam@gtisqr.UUCP (Sam Felton) (09/02/88)
In article <11102@cgl.ucsf.EDU>, mday@cgl.ucsf.edu (Mark Day) writes: > In article <16005@apple.Apple.COM> jordan@apple.com.UUCP (Jordan Mattson) writes: > > At present, only KIS, Kanji Interface System, and AIS, Arabic Interface > >are available from APDA. ...stuff deleted... >...that I have spoken to know nothing about this. Has anyone gotten a hold > of the Chinese version, or does one have to travel to Hong Kong to get it? I want to get this info also. I have several friends from Taiwan and Hong Kong who would also like to know. Also, a question: If your software is Script Manager-compatible, will it run properly, with the native script in place of roman characters? I have looked into this a little but have no experience with the SM. Does anyone know how the characters are entered? I have seen a couple of machines that allow you to enter Hanzi; one was a PC-clone from the PRC called a "Great Wall" and it had radicals on the keys, with the next-char key taking the place of a <RETURN> key. This was neat but was still basically MS-DOS (yes, real DOS). The other machine, a Taiwanese box, was more WIMP-interface where you point at a horizontally-scrolling set of menu columns that had the radicals in them, and held down various keys as you un-clicked the mouse to determine where the radical was positioned in the character. I know that this is not comp.lang.chin (or whatever), so thanks for bearing with me. >Thanks, > ---------- > Mark Day > UUCP: ..ucbvax!ucsfcgl!mday > ARPA: mday@cgl.ucsf.edu > BITNET: mday@ucsfcgl.BITNET Sam Felton ( still no signature :-{ )
duggie@Jessica.stanford.edu (Doug Felt) (09/03/88)
In article <438@gt-ford.gtisqr.UUCP> sam@gtisqr.UUCP (Sam Felton) writes: [ has anyone obtained the Chinese System from Apple ] I did, by bothering Jordan Matteson mercilessly-- not recommended procedure ;-). Got Hebrew, Arabic, and Kanji too. Apple seems to be laboring under the misconception that this software is only of interest to people overseas. Either that or dealers refuse to distribute it for them. >Also, a question: If your software is Script Manager-compatible, will it run >properly, with the native script in place of roman characters? I have looked >into this a little but have no experience with the SM. Sure, but it takes some work to be compatible. TextEdit has been patched to work with the Script Manager in systems 5.0 and later. Unfortunately, besides the usual problems with TextEdit, you can only use one script per text edit record. This is still ok for some of us since Roman (that is, English) characters are included in Chinese character set. They are just large and blocky, rather like Chicago bold. This is particularly a pain with the Finder, but you can use an English Finder with the Chinese system if you don't mind not being able to read the Chinese-named files on the desktop. Number, date, and time formats are all different. Most software that I have seen works poorly with multibyte scripts, and some vendors (i.e. the makers of Fullwrite) don't think foreign language support is worth the trouble. The only word processor I know that works is teachtext, if you want to call that a word processor. Its good for memos. Hypercard only works minimally with Chinese. In particular, you cannot use the find command to search for Chinese characters or sentences. However, you can use Chinese in scripts, name cards and fields in Chinese, type Chinese with the type command, etc. Of course, you need at least 2 megs of memory). >Does anyone know how the characters are entered? I have seen a couple of >machines that allow you to enter Hanzi; one was a PC-clone from the PRC called You can choose from different input systems using a DA. Apple-supplied input systems include pin-yin, character code, and a stroke-based method. You can also mix methods to some extent. Matching characters (from the dictionary of about 6800) appear in the top of two pop-up bars along the bottom of the screen (the bottom contains what you have typed so far). You can use the control panel to customize whether the list of characters is reordered (the most recent character you have chosen with the same pinyin appears first) as well as other details of input. Apple is not telling any of us mere mortals how to write input methods. As an aside, the best system I have seen is the Tien Ma system on the IBM. You type pinyin with no tones and it translates as you type into modern Chinese, using word pairs and context. It seems to have an accuracy rate of over 95%. Many Chinese seem to prefer stroke-based or special encodings (cangjie) because they resist having to learn 'standard' mandarin for their own language, but non-native speakers and native speakers of the mandarin dialect who know pinyin find it far and away the best method. One major problem with Chinese is that there are two versions, one for simplified characters (Beijing) and one for traditional (Taipei). The internal character encodings are NOT the same, and the systems come separately, so it is difficult if not impossible to use both systems on the same machine at the same time. Apple wouldn't even send me the Taibei version but I got a copy from a student who bought it in Hong Kong. It has a juyinfuhao input method which I find harder to use than pinyin. This enterprising graduate student from Hong Kong, Fung Lee, has written a translator program which lets you take a document written with one script and convert it to one in the other, but you still need both systems and still can't run them at the same time. Get the script-manager documentation from APDA. It includes lots of screen dumps showing how things work. It also includes many more examples of how to program for the Script Manager than does Inside Mac V5. Push Apple for better support of foreign-language scripts in English-speaking countries. Marketing needs to know there is a demand. The tech people who work on the script manager have done a great job, and know just whats needed to create a truly international machine. Apple deserves plenty of credit for what they've managed to do so far. Let them know, but keep pushing! >Sam Felton ( still no signature :-{ ) Doug Felt (no signature to speak of) Courseware Authoring Tools Project Sweet Hall 3rd Floor Stanford, CA 94305 duggie@jessica.stanford.edu