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From: cs313s02@uhccux.UUCP (Cs313s02)
Newsgroups: comp.misc,comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: Re: chinese computer
Message-ID: <1069@uhccux.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 6-Nov-87 03:53:13 EST
Article-I.D.: uhccux.1069
Posted: Fri Nov  6 03:53:13 1987
Date-Received: Sun, 8-Nov-87 14:49:32 EST
References: <1423@ttidca.TTI.COM> <21601@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU>
Reply-To: cs313s02@uhccux.UUCP (Cs313s02)
Organization: U. of Barbarians. Honolulu, Hawaii
Lines: 52
Keywords: chinese computer
Summary: Close, but no cigar.
Xref: mnetor comp.misc:1585 comp.sys.ibm.pc:9832

In article <21601@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU> oster@dewey.soe.berkeley.edu.UUCP (David Phillip Oster) writes:
>In article <1423@ttidca.TTI.COM> lei@ttidca.TTI.COM (Mary Lei) writes:
>>I read from the November 2nd issue of Business week that next year
>>San Diego based China Business Machines will announce a
>>Chinese wordprocessor and computer that mimics the brush strokes of
>>Chinese character writing. Anyone have more information on this?
 
>I don't understand what the big deal is here. Apple periodically
>issues free updates of its system software.
>        [ More nonsense about using convert all applications to Chinese
>          via Mac's ResEdit deleted ]

     Sure, using ResEdit is fine if you're just going to be working with
a few Chinese characters.  But to be a useful system, you need at least
50% of all Chinese characters in there.  I suspect the practical limit
of doing Chinese characters this way is about 5% of all Chinese characters.

>Script manager compatible word processors, such as Macintosh Microsoft
>Word 3.01, let you mix English and Chinese (and as many other language
>interface systems as you have on your system) on the same line.

     This one is a bigger joke.  Imagine how easy it is to select one
character, out of the several thousands of Chinese characters possible.
Sure it's possible, but it's not at all practical.  I think I'd rather
write everything out by hand (not that I remember how... :-).
 
>Seems kind of dumb to wait a year for vaporware from San Diego when 
>you could be working on a Macintosh today.

     It'll more dumb to try something like this on a Mac.  Unless the
designers of Mac had Chinese in mind when they designed the machine
(which I highly doubt), no thanks to Mac.  And besides, several Chinese
word processors are available for PCs, and even Apple IIs. 
      
>I personally haven't seen the Chinese language interface system.
>I only own a copy of the Arabic and the Kanji language interface systems.

     There are lot more Chinese characters than Arabic and Kanji combined.
Again, it might be tolerable for a small character set, but not a workable
Chinese character set.   Besides, I don't think this is what Mary Lei was
really asking about.  Emulating the brush strokes of a character is not
simply putting the strokes into vectors.  This is not a flame, but just
to point out some inaccuracies in you reply.
 
>--- David Phillip Oster            --A Sun 3/60 makes a poor Macintosh II.
>Arpa: oster@dewey.soe.berkeley.edu --A Macintosh II makes a poor Sun 3/60.
>Uucp: {uwvax,decvax,ihnp4}!ucbvax!oster%dewey.soe.berkeley.edu
-- 
Yuan Chang (currently using a stupid student account)
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