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From: izumi@violet.berkeley.edu (Izumi Ohzawa)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac,comp.sys.next
Subject: Re: What do I want to see in the Apple of the 90's?
Message-ID: <1989Dec16.032108.11740@agate.berkeley.edu>
Date: 16 Dec 89 03:21:08 GMT
References: <9986@zodiac.ADS.COM> <192@atncpc.UUCP> <1630@intercon.com> <7614@sdcsvax.UCSD.Edu> <5985@ubc-cs.UUCP>
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In article <5985@ubc-cs.UUCP> halliday@cc.ubc.ca (Laura Halliday) writes:
>In article <7614@sdcsvax.UCSD.Edu> rfellman@ucsd.edu (Ronald Fellman) writes:
>>In article <1630@intercon.com> amanda@mermaid.intercon.com (Amanda Walker) writes:
>>>My "Old Boat Anchor" has:
>>> - A Resource Manager, permitting (among other things) international
>>>   localization *without recompilation*, including all of the system
>>>   software
>>>
>>> - Built-in facilities for handling non-roman writing systems and keyboards
>>
>>I can't see how most people would care about this!
>
>*I* certainly care. Not all of the world speaks English, you know.
>
>I'll bet Macintosh gurus somewhere are developing Russian system software, if
>nobody hasn't already. Can the same be said for NeXT?

What do you think Canon, which owns 1/6 of NeXT and has exclusive
distribution rights for NeXT in east Asia, is doing for
its market of Japan, Korea, China among others?

And no one puts in a universal power supply for 100 - 240 volts
into NeXT just for satisfying travelling US users.

I do care too, and NeXT is better prepared for non-English writing
systems.

NeXT uses Display PostScript and its extended version handles
the complete Japanese character set (6000+ characters).  The
printer version of this is already in LaserWriter II NTX available
in Japan (includes a hard disk within the printer).

Not only will this take care of Japanese,
this will allow writing systems which go right-to-left (Hebrew, Arabic),
as well as text lines that go from top to bottom.
This without any hardware modification.

Do you know that Macs sold in Japan have different hardware (ROMs)
to make Kanji rendering faster?  Although KanjiTalk runs on the
US version of hardware, but slowly.

NeXT cubes sold anywhere will be identical in terms of hardware.
No special ROMs are needed, and the cube can be plugged in
anywhere without any power converter.

The good part is that the current NeXT printer will be automatically
a Kanji printer too by a simple upgrade to a new version of Display
PostScript.  With Mac, you will have to buy a new printer if you
use anything other than NTX.

Ah, you might say that KanjiTalk can print Kanjis on regular
LaserWriters, but try printing them at 60-point Font size.
Yuck!  Those smoothed jaggies are ugly.

Izumi Ohzawa, izumi@violet.berkeley.edu