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From: haruyama@ut-sally.UUCP (Shinichiro Haruyama)
Newsgroups: net.micro.mac
Subject: Re: Japanese Characters on Mac?
Message-ID: <3587@ut-sally.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 20-Nov-85 12:14:21 EST
Article-I.D.: ut-sally.3587
Posted: Wed Nov 20 12:14:21 1985
Date-Received: Thu, 21-Nov-85 22:03:25 EST
References: <10945@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU>
Organization: U. Texas CS Dept., Austin, Texas
Lines: 51

> Does anyone have a program to display Japanese characters?
> How about a wordprocessor using them?
> Is anybody working on same?


     A Japanese start up company called Ergonomics  Software
Products  International Corporation in Tokyo announced a new
Japanese word processor "EgWord" ( which is pronounced "easy
word" ) this summer.

     It does not require any hardware change  to  Macintosh.
Since  there is a one to one correspondence between Japanese
Kanas and English alphabets, a user can use a regular alpha-
bet  keyboard to input Japanese text. The input is displayed
on a Mac screen either by Katakanas,  Hirakanas,  or  alpha-
bets.   Usually  Kanjis  which  are  very similar to Chinese
characters have more than one pronunciations.  When  a  user
wants to use kanjis rather than kanas, he/she can let Mac do
the conversion from kanas to kanjis. I have used EgWord  and
found that the conversion was quite fast: just a few seconds
for a text which contains about one hundred kanji words. The
accuracy of conversion is also very good.

     This software comes with three disks: a system disk,  a
font disk.  and a dictionary disk and can be obtained either
from Ergonomics Software Products International  Corporation
or from Canon in Tokyo.

     Ergonomics Software Products International  Corporation
is  selling  another Japanese softwares for Macintosh called
EgBridge. Using EgBridge a user can use many  American  made
Mac  softwares  such  as  Mac Paint, Multiplan, and MS-Chart
with Japanese characters.

     This  September,  Canon  announced   Dyna   Mac   which
accelerates  EgWord,  by using a ROM which contains Japanese
font patterns.  This speeds up the display  of  texts  on  a
screen or on a printer, though a hardware change is needed.

     The address of Ergonomics  Software  Products  Interna-
tional Corporation is

Taneda Bldg., 5F. 1-2-5 Moto-Akasaka,  Minato-ku  Tokyo  107
Japan.
Tel. (Japan) 3-478-2234.

     I do not work for either Ergonomics  Software  Products
International Corporation or Canon.

                    Shinichiro Haruyama
                    The University of Texas at Austin