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From: duggie@Jessica.stanford.edu (Doug Felt)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.next
Subject: Re: Foriegn Markets And Languages
Message-ID: <3196@portia.Stanford.EDU>
Date: 27 Jun 89 16:58:05 GMT
References: <254.24A2330E@bmug.FIDONET.ORG> <25726@agate.BERKELEY.EDU>
Sender: USENET News System <news@Portia.stanford.edu>
Reply-To: duggie@Jessica.UUCP (Doug Felt)
Organization: Stanford University
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>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