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From: izumi@violet.berkeley.edu (Izumi Ohzawa)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.next
Subject: Re: Non-English support
Message-ID: <1989Dec16.080754.24907@agate.berkeley.edu>
Date: 16 Dec 89 08:07:54 GMT
References: <130053@gore.com>
Sender: usenet@agate.berkeley.edu (USENET Administrator;;;;ZU44)
Organization: University of California, Berkeley
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In article <130053@gore.com> jacob@gore.com (Jacob Gore) writes:
>Please, let's separate the question of non-English support for the NeXT
>from that NeXT-vs-Mac-nose-thumbing thread.
>
>What exactly is needed?

Since you ask, here are my requirements/wish list:

[1] Ability to support most exisiting writing systems including
    those which employ text written right-to-left (Hebrew, Arabic),
    and Chinese/Japanese/Korean character set where there are
    6000+ characters, and text are written left-to-right as well
    as top-to-bottom.  I do not consider support only of European
    languages as multi-lingual.

    I believe NeXT, because of its use of Display PostScript
    and DPS's composite font extension, has the necessary
    infrastructure to do this without much further work, because
    composite font extension already supports all of the above.

    The keyboard remapping is probably already supported.
    For Chinese/Japanese/Korean languages, the keyboard mapping
    really is not an issue, because there has to be some kind of
    a phonetic-to-Kanji conversion services provided by the system.
    It is the question of how to implement this service.

There should be two levels of local language support.

[2] One is the support by the system to display/edit/print
    local language scripts within application windows, but not
    for system alerts, error messages, menu titiles, window tiles.
    Personally, this is the environment where I would like to
    operate in.  I want all messages from the system and applications
    to come in English, but I would like to be able to edit/display
    and print in non-English language from applications.

[3] The other level is the case of complete localization where
    all menus, window titles, alert panels, voice alerts come in
    the local language.  Of course, it should allow complete support
    of the local language in application windows.  This is clearly
    needed if NeXT is to be sold to non-technical people in other
    countries.
    I suppose, it would be acceptable to have messages in files like
    /usr/adm/messages in English, because they are gibberish to
    most people anyway.

I sincerely hope that NeXT is more open about their intentions
on these matters.  The cubes design choices are nearly all correct
to build up on to carry us into the 90's.  I don't have to be
told of a delivery date of a certain product, but I would like to
know if a support for, e.g., Kanji is already thought out, or it
is a major hassle to put it in.  In NeXT's case, I think the
necessary foundation is already there.  Why not state this.

Izumi Ohzawa, izumi@violet.berkeley.edu