This is Non-English-support in view mode; [Up]
Date: Sun 16-Dec-1989 08:07:54 From: izumi@violet.berkeley.edu (Izumi Ohzawa) Subject: Re: Non-English support In article <130053@gore.com> jacob@gore.com (Jacob Gore) writes: >Please, let's separate the question of non-English support for the NeXT >from that NeXT-vs-Mac-nose-thumbing thread. > >What exactly is needed? Since you ask, here are my requirements/wish list: [1] Ability to support most exisiting writing systems including those which employ text written right-to-left (Hebrew, Arabic), and Chinese/Japanese/Korean character set where there are 6000+ characters, and text are written left-to-right as well as top-to-bottom. I do not consider support only of European languages as multi-lingual. I believe NeXT, because of its use of Display PostScript and DPS's composite font extension, has the necessary infrastructure to do this without much further work, because composite font extension already supports all of the above. The keyboard remapping is probably already supported. For Chinese/Japanese/Korean languages, the keyboard mapping really is not an issue, because there has to be some kind of a phonetic-to-Kanji conversion services provided by the system. It is the question of how to implement this service. There should be two levels of local language support. [2] One is the support by the system to display/edit/print local language scripts within application windows, but not for system alerts, error messages, menu titiles, window tiles. Personally, this is the environment where I would like to operate in. I want all messages from the system and applications to come in English, but I would like to be able to edit/display and print in non-English language from applications. [3] The other level is the case of complete localization where all menus, window titles, alert panels, voice alerts come in the local language. Of course, it should allow complete support of the local language in application windows. This is clearly needed if NeXT is to be sold to non-technical people in other countries. I suppose, it would be acceptable to have messages in files like /usr/adm/messages in English, because they are gibberish to most people anyway. I sincerely hope that NeXT is more open about their intentions on these matters. The cubes design choices are nearly all correct to build up on to carry us into the 90's. I don't have to be told of a delivery date of a certain product, but I would like to know if a support for, e.g., Kanji is already thought out, or it is a major hassle to put it in. In NeXT's case, I think the necessary foundation is already there. Why not state this. Izumi Ohzawa, izumi@violet.berkeley.edu
Date: Sun 17-Dec-1989 00:46:04 From: dcarpent@sjuphil.uucp (D. Carpenter) Subject: Re: Non-English support In article <1989Dec16.080754.24907@agate.berkeley.edu> izumi@violet.berkeley.edu (Izumi Ohzawa) writes: >In article <130053@gore.com> jacob@gore.com (Jacob Gore) writes: >>Please, let's separate the question of non-English support for the NeXT >>from that NeXT-vs-Mac-nose-thumbing thread. >> >>What exactly is needed? > >Since you ask, here are my requirements/wish list: > >[1] Ability to support most exisiting writing systems including > those which employ text written right-to-left (Hebrew, Arabic), > and Chinese/Japanese/Korean character set where there are > 6000+ characters, and text are written left-to-right as well > as top-to-bottom. I do not consider support only of European > languages as multi-lingual. I'd like to register my STRONG agreement with this. I purchased a NeXT as a "scholarly workstation," and for it's promise in this area to be fully realized, support for NON-WESTERN (and not merely non-English) languages is essential. I'm not too worried about support for Japanese, for some fairly obvious (read: economic) reasons. But support for other languages is important as well. I make use of Sanskrit, for example, a "dead language" perhaps (although not quite dead, in fact), but extremely important for one interested in the history of culture. The same could be said for MANY other non-Western languages. The reception of the NeXT in some scholarly circles has been cooled somewhat precisely because there is as yet no support for non-Western languages (or even non-English at present). I hope the people at NeXT have a strong commitment to this. > >The cubes design choices are nearly all correct >to build upon to carry us into the 90's. I don't have to be >told of a delivery date of a certain product, but I would like to >know if a support for, e.g., Kanji is already thought out, or it >is a major hassle to put it in. In NeXT's case, I think the >necessary foundation is already there. Why not state this. > >Izumi Ohzawa, izumi@violet.berkeley.edu > Agreed. Some indication of NeXT's intentions would be helpful. Any volunteers?
Date: Sun 17-Dec-1989 04:12:05 From: duggie@jessica.Stanford.EDU (Doug Felt) Subject: Re: Non-English support In article <130053@gore.com> jacob@gore.com (Jacob Gore) writes: >Please, let's separate the question of non-English support for the NeXT >from that NeXT-vs-Mac-nose-thumbing thread. > >What exactly is needed? > Amen. You need to support multiple writing systems with large character sets (Chinese) right-to-left text (Hebrew) and text in which character glyphs change based on context (Arabic). It should be possible to configure the system to support multiple writing systems simultaneously (some documents names in Hebrew, some in Chinese). Support should be system-wide (menus, titles in windows, alerts). It should be possible to configure a single machine to come up with the system in a different language depending on the user. All applications that support text of mixed fonts and sizes should support arbitrary mixes of writing systems as well. The writing systems used for input and editing should be independent of that for the system. Dates, times, currency, etc should appear in the proper format for the language they are in. Macro langages for UI scripting, databases, spreadsheets, etc should be language-independent. They should parse dates etc correctly. Indexing programs (Librarian) should also function properly (Chinese, for instance, has no spaces to delimit words). It should be possible to switch between input systems for those languages where several exist (Chinese again). A particular desire of mine is to be able to mix both traditional and simplified Chinese characters in the same body of text. It would be handy to have the ability to convert between the two where there is a clear correspondance. I think you need a very large Chinese character set because hand-drawn glyphs are useless for indexing or information retrieval, and they won't scale (unless you get the user to use postscript to draw them.) The above is what I think you need for a real multilingual machine. Programs that manipulate text should be prepared to deal with any language the user throws at it, no matter what language the program's UI is configured in. One should not have to buy multiple copies of NExcel in order to use it with different language data. The user's choice of language should be constrained only by the system software on her or his machine. "Localizability" is a bit different from "multilinguality." I don't expect that users be able to translate all of a program's menus and error messages into their language of choice, although I would prefer that this be possible simply because most companies won't do it themselves. I do expect that any program be able to deal with text in the user's language of choice wherever it manipulates or displays text supplied by the user. Not that there aren't huge technical problems, of course :-) Doug Felt
Date: Sun 17-Dec-1989 23:40:09 From: g2k@mentor.cc.purdue.edu (Frederic Giacometti) Subject: Re: Non-English support I am amazed about the reaction of some persons when it comes to claim the basics foreign characters on the NeXT. How can people be so intolerant, or ignorant (I know, 60% of American students can't place Beijin or Berlin on a map). Hey, what would you say if you had to write english whithout h, x, y, w letters ? Having to replace x by ks, y by ii, w by v ? I would be glad to talk with you then. Being European, each time I have to write a report in my native language, I have to take the old Mac which at least provides the basic combinations of letters and accents. America is not the world; be sure that until NeXT implements the accents on its machines, NeXT won't sell a single machine outside the scientific comunity in the continental EEC. To conquer the non-scientific users in Europe, NeXT MUST have accents working on its machines. Until then, Mac will be the preferred choice of these users. I am not talking about selling NeXTs to hebrew or chinese scholars having their mind 2000 years ago, but to the technologically most advanced countries on that planet, which is not reduced to the state of California nor to the english-speaking world. So, think about it, from now onwards try to write your reports in english without using h, x, y, w letters. Frederic
Date: Sun 18-Dec-1989 01:18:47 From: ck@voa3.UUCP (Chris Kern) Subject: Re: Non-English support In article <7733@portia.Stanford.EDU> duggie@jessica.Stanford.EDU (Doug Felt) > . . . for a real multilingual machine [,] >Programs that manipulate text should be prepared to deal with any >language the user throws at it, no matter what language the program's >UI is configured in. . . . The user's choice >of language should be constrained only by the system software on her >or his machine. > >Not that there aren't huge technical problems, of course :-) There are serious technical issues, but they yield to sufficient determination and attention to detail. We currently have a large network (~1000 workstations) that supports more than 30 languages. By this time next year, we will have 43 languages, all running on the same hardware and system software "platform" (Xerox 6085 "Mesa" processor, Xerox ViewPoint software) and all coexisting within the same network environment. The system imposes far fewer constraints on the users than the real world imposes: our Chinese writers can't read Arabic text, although there is no inherent restriction in the technology that prevents an Arabic user from sending text to a Chinese user.
Date: Sun 18-Dec-1989 05:37:00 From: duggie@jessica.Stanford.EDU (Doug Felt) Subject: Re: Non-English support In article <348@voa3.UUCP> ck@voa3.UUCP (Chris Kern) writes: > We currently have a large network (~1000 workstations) >that supports more than 30 languages. By this time next year, we will have >43 languages, all running on the same hardware and system software "platform" >(Xerox 6085 "Mesa" processor, Xerox ViewPoint software) and all coexisting >within the same network environment. Sorry to bother the net with this, my mail bounced. Could you point me at any published reports or articles about this system? Thanks. Doug Felt
Date: Sun 19-Dec-1989 00:32:07 From: davef@jessica.Stanford.EDU (David Finkelstein) Subject: Re: Non-English support In article <130053@gore.com> jacob@gore.com (Jacob Gore) writes: >Please, let's separate the question of non-English support for the NeXT >from that NeXT-vs-Mac-nose-thumbing thread. > >What exactly is needed? > >Jacob >-- >Jacob Gore Jacob@Gore.Com boulder!gore!jacob To start with, support for diacriticals. As it stands, I've got a French professor who'd like to use the Next in his class, but they can't write anything in French. David Finkelstein Academic Information Resources Stanford University davef@jessica.stanford.edu
Date: Sun 19-Dec-1989 03:26:20 From: nmk@cucumber.Princeton.EDU (Nick Katz) Subject: Re: Non-English support According to the User's Reference for 1.0, pages 415 and 416, all the diacriticals one needs in typing French are right there in "all" the standard font families, e.g., Times and Helvetica. What's the problem? Nick Katz, nmk@math.princeton.edu
Date: Sun 18-Dec-1989 19:50:00 From: boyle@altair.mcs.anl.gov Subject: Re: Non-English support /* Written 5:40 pm Dec 17, 1989 by g2k@mentor.cc.purdue.edu in altair:comp.sys.next */ I am amazed about the reaction of some persons when it comes to claim the basics foreign characters on the NeXT. How can people be so intolerant, or ignorant [...] Hey, what would you say if you had to write english whithout h, x, y, w letters ? Having to replace x by ks, y by ii, w by v ? [...] Being European, each time I have to write a report in my native language, I have to take the old Mac which at least provides the basic combinations of letters and accents. America is not the world; be sure that until NeXT implements the accents on its machines, NeXT won't sell a single machine outside the scientific comunity in the continental EEC. To conquer the non-scientific users in Europe, NeXT MUST have accents working on its machines. Until then, Mac will be the preferred choice of these users. [...] Frederic /* End of text from altair:comp.sys.next */ Well, the situation in regard to European languages that use variants of the Roman alphabet is not quite hopeless. If you look at the appendices of the NeXT User's Reference Manual, it shows how to type the various accent marks (including those needed for French, umlauts for German, the es-set (?... means "ss" and looks like Greek beta), Polish slashed l's, dot-less "i" needed to combine with umlaut dots to correctly spell "naive" in English, etc. The manual says that the accent marks are supposed to print over or under the preceding character, but print after them in applications that don't yet support them. WriteNow prints them after the character, so I guess support isn't in 1.0, but things like the AE ligature and o-slash for the Scandanavian langugaes already work (including on the NeXT printer). Sorry I can't include a sample :-). Jim Boyle
Date: Sun 19-Dec-1989 15:37:47 From: dcarpent@sjuphil.uucp (D. Carpenter) Subject: Re: Non-English support In article <12306@phoenix.Princeton.EDU> nmk@cucumber.Princeton.EDU (Nick Katz) writes: >According to the User's Reference for 1.0, pages 415 and 416, all the >diacriticals one needs in typing French are right there in "all" the >standard font families, e.g., Times and Helvetica. What's the problem? The problem is that you CAN'T USE THEM. I quote from p. 416: "The accent mark should appear above or below the character when displayed or printed, BUT IT WILL APPEAR NEXT TO THE CHARACTER INSTEAD IN APPLICATIONS THAT DON'T SUPPORT THIS FEATURE YET," i.e., the applications on the NeXT, like WriteNow, Edit . . . The lack of diacritics IS a problem, and it is a serious one for many of us. It should be remedied ASAP.
Date: Sun 19-Dec-1989 18:03:26 From: chari@nueces.cactus.org (Chris Whatley) Subject: Re: Non-English support nmk@cucumber.Princeton.EDU (Nick Katz) writes: >According to the User's Reference for 1.0, pages 415 and 416, all the >diacriticals one needs in typing French are right there in "all" the >standard font families, e.g., Times and Helvetica. What's the problem? Try it out in WriteNow. You'll see. If you try to type e with accent grave, you get "e'". Chris
Date: Sun 20-Dec-1989 05:46:54 From: wb1j+@andrew.cmu.edu (William M. Bumgarner) Subject: Re: Non-English support <7762@portia.Stanford.EDU> I was using Frame (I love it!) one day, and needed a diacritical for some random reason. Naturally, I went to Alternate-e e for an acute accent-- and it gave it to me. Works fine in WriteNow also, if I remember correctly. Seems to be about the same lay as the Mac keyboard-- which is probably why I went for it... I have typed on a Mac for a long time (and some of that in French). There is a wonderful utility called CharFind that shows where all the special chars are-- it is available via anonymous ftp from purdue, I think. Frame also has the key layout in the help files. b.bumgarner | Disclaimer: All opinions expressed are my own. wb1j+@andrew.cmu.edu | I officially don't represent anyone unless I NeXT Campus Consultant | explicity say I am doing so. So there. <Thpppt!> "I ride tandem with the random/Things don't run the way I planned them..."
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