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From: info-mac@utcsrgv.UUCP (info-mac)
Newsgroups: ont.micro.mac
Subject: Re: May/June issue of MacWorld--Japanese/Chinese character sets
Message-ID: <4073@utcsrgv.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 27-Apr-84 02:38:10 EST
Article-I.D.: utcsrgv.4073
Posted: Fri Apr 27 02:38:10 1984
Date-Received: Fri, 27-Apr-84 03:19:25 EST
Sender: peterr@utcsrgv.UUCP
Organization: CSRG, University of Toronto
Lines: 52

Date: 26 Apr 84 16:41:05 PST
From: uw-beaver!SChen.pa@XEROX.ARPA
Subject: Re: May/June issue of MacWorld--Japanese/Chinese character sets
To: info-mac@SUMEX-AIM.ARPA
In-Reply-To: Tom.Wood@CMU-RI-FAS.ARPA's message of 26 Apr 84 00:12:24
 EST 
Cc: Star^.es@XEROX.ARPA, JStarUsers^.es@XEROX.ARPA, CStarUsers^.pa@XEROX.ARPA
Reply-To: up to you

Re: "Remember, it will be the first time that Japanese people type [when
Japanese Macs are available]. There is no standard for that task because
all business communication in Japan is handwritten." said the Product
Manager of International Mac Team.

Here they go again! This is another example that some people are fond of
claiming themselves to be the first when they actually are not.  I
wonder how those foreign clone machine manufacturers that they sued
would feel about this.

In fact Xerox JStars as well as many other international Star products
have been on the market for a couple of years; and CStar prototypes have
been available inside Xerox for some time. Moreover, Japanese and
Chinese themselves (that are not Xerox employees) have been developing
computers and keyboards for their own languages for many years, too.
Their existing input methods and the display quality might not be so
good as those with Xerox JStar or CStar, and most of them, like Mac,
don't have laser-quality outputs or Ethernet. But for sure it will NOT
be "the first time that Japanese people type", when Japanese Macs are
available; and neither is it the case for Chinese.

According to some Japanese friends of mine, it is also NOT true to say
that "all business communication in Japan is handwritten"; and it is not
the case for Chinese either.  I have in my home a Chinese book published
in Hong Kong printed by laser printers with beautifully digitized
Chinese characters; and in Taiwan I have seen computerized billing
statements from some large organizations with Chinese characters printed
by dot-matrix printers. As to common business (wo)men in Taiwan or Hong
Kong, they usually hire a typist to type their business letters using a
special typewirter for Chinese or Japanese characters. There are many
such typing shops on the streets, and many (even small) businesses have
their own typists and machines. The price is only about several dollars
per page, higher if electric typewriter is used, lower if one hires
one's own typists. Based on these facts, do you believe what he said
that in Japan, a technologically more advanced country than Hong Kong or
Taiwan, people still have to use hand writing for business
communication?

It's really ...... !!