Xref: utzoo comp.emacs:4549 comp.editors:403 comp.lang.c:13743 comp.sys.ibm.pc:20777
Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!auspex!guy
From: guy@auspex.UUCP (Guy Harris)
Newsgroups: comp.emacs,comp.editors,comp.lang.c,comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: Re: Programming and international character sets.
Message-ID: <380@auspex.UUCP>
Date: 2 Nov 88 06:39:30 GMT
References: <532@krafla.rhi.hi.is> <8804@smoke.BRL.MIL> <4002@homxc.UUCP>
Reply-To: guy@auspex.UUCP (Guy Harris)
Followup-To: comp.editors
Organization: Auspex Systems, Santa Clara
Lines: 35

In article <4002@homxc.UUCP> gauss@homxc.UUCP (E.GAUSS) writes:

(And misattributes both quotes - that's why I don't like the "In article
..., ... writes:" lines)

>An author friend that I work with, Eb Colville, has been trying for a
>number of years to find a VI editor that will handle the German characters
>available in the extended ASCI characters on his MS-DOS  PC.  He used those
>in his novel, THE LAST ZEPPELIN, which is trying to find a publisher.  Whatever
>the talk, it does not seem to be possible to do this.  Extended ASCII
>requires the full eight bits to be available, and all VI's that we have
>seen simply toss away the lead bit folding umlauted characters into
>control characters.

The "vi" in System V Release 3.1 handles 8-bit characters. 
Unfortunately, I don't know if anybody's ported it to MS-DOS....

Also, some version of Unipress EMACS can be configured to support 8-bit
characters as well (I don't know if that version has been released yet
or not).

>There are methods for doing Japannese where the keyboardist types in
>"Romanji" and the computer makes a guess at the konji.

The ones I've seen convert Romaji to Kana as you type (this is, as I
understand it, a straightforward translation) and then permit you to
request that the computer translate the Kana you typed since the last
checkpoint (switching mode into Kanji mode, or asking for a
Kana-to-Kanji translation) into Kanji.  It gives you a list of the
possible translations, and lets you choose which one you want.

Of course, now you'd need an editor that handles *16*-bit characters; I
think AT&T has a "vi" that will handle them, and I don't know about
EMACS (although I remember an #ifdef in the aforementioned Unipress
version for Kanji).