paul@swanee.ee.uwa.oz.au (Paul Ostergaard) (04/24/91)
Hello out there, I am sorry if this has been answered before, but I have read in the manuals about indirect references to Windows Kanji support. Unfortunately I could not discover any explicit mention of actual support for Kanji. I am interested in application development that supports Kanji in some way. If anyone out there has knowledge of explicit Windows features that support Kanji, I would appreciate very much if they could email me that information. I will post a summary of responses. My email address is paul@swanee.ee.uwa.oz.au Thanking you in advance, Paul Ostergaard.
ebergman@isis.cs.du.edu (Eric Bergman-Terrell) (04/24/91)
Windows has pretty good support for developing "international" applications (i.e. developing programs that don't run with an American accent). See Petzold, pp. 128 - 131, etc. and "Writing International Applications for Windows 3.0" - part of an addendum to the SDK docs called the "Windows Development Notes Packet", part #14820. Terrell
delahunt@adobe.COM (Jim DeLaHunt) (04/25/91)
In article <paul.672462391@uniwa> paul@swanee.ee.uwa.oz.au (Paul Ostergaard) writes: >I am interested in application development that supports Kanji in some >way. If anyone out there has knowledge of explicit Windows features >that support Kanji, I would appreciate very much if they could email me >that information. I will post a summary of responses. > >Paul Ostergaard. There are Japanese editions of Windows 2 and 3, about which I know a little. I think that applications can, to a certain extent, treat Japanese fonts like Roman fonts. They will obviously want to format text differently for Japanese than for English or Australian or other foreign languages (:-), but the Windows calls are probably used in a similar fashion. Japanese fonts are implemented so that they work much like fixed-pitch Roman fonts. They have a standard PFM metrics structure, indicating fixed 'character' widths. They use the 'Romaji-Katakana-Shift-JIS' byte encoding common on PCs, where half-width Roman and Katakana characters have a one-byte code and full-width characters have a two-byte code. The dfCharSet field in the PFM is 0x80 for a Japanese font. A Japanese font requires a bitmap font resource (.FON) to the same extent a Roman font needs one. However, it only contains character images for those characters with one-byte codes. The two-byte characters are imaged by the display or printer driver, using fonts built-in to the PC's ROMS or to the printer. This implies that there can be no aftermarket bitmapped kanji fonts, and that the display driver is specific to each manufacturer's hard- ware. Because of this and other considerations, Windows is not distributed directly by Microsoft in Japan. It is adapted and released by NEC, Fujitsu, Oki, and the other hardware manufacturers. There is some provision in the architecture for front-end processors for input, and for gaiji creation, but I am not too familiar with these. There is support for vertical fonts, but it is a bit too complex to explain in a short message. I have been doing some Windows development in the U.S., and have not been overwhelmed by the level of technical support from Microsoft and the Japanese systems vendors. There is a Japanese SDK, which may be available from Microsoft Japan. I suggest you write them: Microsoft Co. Ltd. K Building 5-25, 7-Chome, Nishi-Shinjuku Shinjuku-ku, Tokyo 160 TEL +58-3-3363-1200 JAPAN FAX +58-3-3363-1281 I imagine you will need to get a Japanese PC, C compiler, software, etc. to do serious development. Japanese versions of MS-DOS tend to vary from the "IBM AT-compatible" norm. I have not tried to get Japanese-related support from Microsoft Online. If you have access to that, it might be worth a try. I hope this information helps. --Jim DeLaHunt delahunt@adobe.com (Internet) Technical Support ...!{sun,apple,decwrl}!adobe!delahunt (UUCP) Adobe Systems Inc. +1-415-962-3790 (Phone) +1-415-961-3769 (Fax)