cos842x@vaxc.cc.monash.edu.au (11/15/89)
It seems many people are trying to handle foreign characters e.g Slavics, Greeks etc.. I am posting this info, maybe it will help someone. I still think we are yet in the early days of foreign character handling. I am eagerly waiting for the public release of ADOBEE Font encryption algorithm. My idea is to implement a screen 'Postcript' like driver. This will allow a true WYSIWYG system (?) or some easier ways of doing foreign fonts. Two years ago, in the early days of PC and semi dump printers. Out of the need and lack of comercial system, I developed some hardware and software to turn PC into a foreign language system. I was able to handle most romanised characters e.g Cyrillics (all Slavics), Greeks, Hebrew, French (complete set), Phonetic symbols etc.. Some drivers were written so e.g DBASE, LOTUS, MULTIMATE can be done in the appropriate foreign language. My approach is in two steps: 1/ A new character set is installed in a monochrome display card (or hercules). I actually have designed a font downloadable display card. The card can have up to 5 fonts of 256 chars each. Although since then you can get such a card comercially e.g Hercules Plus, RAMVIEW . 2/ I wrote a font editor (bit map) program that allows new fonts for the display card to be created (9x16 matrix max) . I also wrote a font editor ( variable character width ) for the TOSHIBA P1351,P351 .Toshiba was the first 24 pins downloadable printer on the market. Once these fonts are created and loaded into the display card and the printer, (because the P1351 print codes differs from PCs you would have to make sure that your display codes matches the printer codes.) Some packages e.g Multimate allows characters translation. To re-map the keyboard layout, packages like Smartkey, ProKey allows you to have a customised keyboard. Since the font is in the hardware, it's 'transparent' to the packages, allowing most PC software to run in different fonts. As I have said this is old technology, I will be pleased if someone can get me a early release of ADOBEE encryption. My system is being used in the Uni Language Department, now with the Laser printer replacing the P1351. ============================================================================== Pan .