This is Foriegn-Markets-And-Languages in view mode; [Up]
Date: Sun 22-Jun-1989 15:02:34 From: Unknown Subject: Re: Foriegn Markets And Languages Your point on the apparent lack of mulit-lingual capability on the NeXT machine is excellent and well taken. I might add that in add- ition to the problems created in the international marketplace, there is the same kind of frustration that I felt when the Mac came out. At the time, sales people were saying that the ability to use multi- ple fonts would make this a good machine for people dealing in foreign languages. I often work in as many as a half a dozen (human) languages, such as hebrew, greek, ugaritic, and so forth, but I have yet to see any evidence that this so-called "Academic Workstation" will do anything except for academics in the Computer Science, Business, or Engineering departments. I would love to know if there is any intention to introduce not only foreign character sets, but right-to- left or up-to-down capability, etc. as well. Thanks for an insightful comment. --Sheldon Greaves
Date: Sun 24-Jun-1989 00:48:30 From: Unknown Subject: Re: Foriegn Markets And Languages In article <254.24A2330E@bmug.FIDONET.ORG> Sheldon.Greaves@f444.n161.z1.FIDONET.ORG (Sheldon Greaves) writes: >...... I would love to know if there is any >intention to introduce not only foreign character sets, but right-to- >left or up-to-down capability, etc. as well. Some PostScript printers sold in Japan have Kanji/Kana character sets in addition to regular fonts found in the US models. On these printers, texts can be printed left-to-right, or up-to-down directions very easily. I have read in an article about Japanese PostScript printers that it is also easy to do right-to-left text printing. For printers, and Display PostScript to do this, "composite font extensions" to PostScript must be present in the PS or DPS interpreter. Although the current NeXT DPS doesn't have that extension, I am sure it will soon, considering the recent announcement of Canon buying into NeXT for rights to sell the cubes in Asia(?). Given this, I think NeXT is by far the easiest machine for making it do true foreign languages, and in nice outline-fonts, because the support of foreign character set and printing directions will be taken care of by the underlying Display PostScript. I can't wait to see this happen :-). Then, the cube will be the only computer I need, and I can throw away my NEC PC9801. Izumi Ohzawa. izumi@violet.berkeley.edu >From: yonge@pnet02.cts.com (Yam Hui)
Date: Sun 27-Jun-1989 16:58:05 From: Unknown Subject: Re: Foriegn Markets And Languages >Given this, I think NeXT is by far the easiest machine for making >it do true foreign languages, and in nice outline-fonts, because >the support of foreign character set and printing directions will >be taken care of by the underlying Display PostScript. I can't >wait to see this happen :-). Then, the cube will be the only >computer I need, and I can throw away my NEC PC9801. > >Izumi Ohzawa. >izumi@violet.berkeley.edu Well, Display Postscript may help, but you need support in the AppKit as well. The routines need to support multi-byte character codes, multiple writing systems, selection of text containing text runs that read in both directions, etc. Programs with macro languages should have some language-independent parsing facility and avoid dependence on the underlying byte-level representation of the language... Apple has tried to address these needs with their Script Manager, and is building support for it into their TextEdit routines and other places in their system software. I can use Japanese, Chinese, Hebrew, Arabic, Korean, and other languages on my Macintosh, with no special hardware, *right now* and the only problem is lack of third-party software that uses the Script Manager. As far as I can tell NeXT has nothing remotely near the Script Manager, nor have they evinced much interest in foreign-language computing. For at least the next few years, the Macintosh will be a better choice for people interested in using 'exotic' languages like those above. Doug Felt Courseware Authoring Tools Project Stanford University duggie@jessica.stanford.edu >From: mdeale@mira.acs.calpoly.edu (Myron Deale)
Date: Sun 28-Jun-1989 02:00:05 From: Unknown Subject: Re: Foriegn Markets And Languages Some NeXT employees mentioned to me that NeXT is creating an Application Kit subclass of Text specifically for dealing with non-english languages. Canon is supposed to use this to make the Japanese version. Since the Japanese version is supposed to be out next year, I imagine they'll have to finish the international Text class pretty soon. Roger Rosner Lighthouse Design >From: george@eitri.cs.cornell.edu (George R. Boyce)
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