Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!samsung!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!cis.ohio-state.edu!ucbvax!agate!mindseye!izumi From: izumi@mindseye.berkeley.edu (Izumi Ohzawa) Newsgroups: comp.sys.next Subject: Re: Japanese NeXTstep (was Re: Nemacs and NeXT) Message-ID: <1991Jun29.010559.16889@agate.berkeley.edu> Date: 29 Jun 91 01:05:59 GMT References: <1991Jun28.095629.29527@agate.berkeley.edu> Sender: usenet@agate.berkeley.edu (USENET Administrator) Organization: University of California, Berkeley Lines: 61 In article youki@newmars.ics.osaka-u.ac.jp (Youki Kadobayashi) writes: > >> Please elaborate on this. Does it go backward? That is, >> can you mount 2.1 OD/floppy on 2.1J system and do read/write? > >Yes. In other words, 2.1J file system is upward compatible to 2.1. > >> If so, is the disk written on 2.1J (but initialized on 2.1) >> still mountable on 2.1 system? > >Yes. I've tried this between 1.0 and 2.0J; it worked fine. Great! This is then quite tolerable, if 2.1J has a means of initializing disk in 2.1 compatible format (e.g., buttons on a panel that pops up when initializing a disk.) I guess NeXT will/should adopt 2.1J format for all its disks in 3.0? >And some more important topic: > >1. Canon should make their Japanese-OS specific documents available via > FTP. There are many international-minded guys who wants to support > Japanese in their Apps. Of course they must be written in English. Agreed. And they should make their OS available ASAP at 60,000yen or less in the rest of the world. In fact, the availability of the OS and docs in Japanese should come first, and should not be delayed awaiting English documentation. At last Tuesday's Developer SIG of BaNG, -=EPS=- (Eric P Scott of San Francisco State U) asked guidelines on what to do/what not to do for developing applications that could be easily adapted to languages with multi-byte character set. The author of Text object, Brian Yamamoto, couldn't answer that question well, except to say that NeXT and other sillicon valley companies seem to be adopting Unicode for these things. [Thank you Brian, and Ali Ozer for enlightening talks!] Well, it seems, authors of Text object for 2.1J are in the best position to answer that question since the Japanese Text object is already there. If extensive Japanese-OS specific documents written in English are not coming soon, AT THE LEAST, they should compile a quick rule set on "what to do/what not to do to make your application easily portable to Japanese environment". This will prevent emergence of apps like WriteNow, which I heard can't be ported and won't be ported to Japanese OS. They should do this as soon as possible before massive amount of apps are written without any regard for multi-byte character set. Unicode is fine, but we have more immediate need for what we already got, and that won't go away any time soon. Izumi Ohzawa [ $@Bg_78^=;(J ] USMail: University of California, 360 Minor Hall, Berkeley, CA 94720 Telephone: (415) 642-6440 Fax: (415) 642-3323 Internet: izumi@violet.berkeley.edu NeXTmail: izumi@pinoko.berkeley.edu