Marketing wizardry & handling of far-east languages.

[David Phillip Oster]

>In article <5566 at tank.uchicago.edu> goer at sophist.UUCP (Richard Goerwitz) writes:
>Very interesting.  The problem I have found (and, regardless of ter-
>minology, it seems real enough to me) is that no one has come up
>with a standard interface that:

>  1) offers flexible creating and use of multiple fonts in the
>     same window
>  2) offers proportional spacing and/or overstrike, or some other
>     ready means of getting languages like Arabic on the screen
>  3) offers access to various wordwrap methods for (1) and (2)

Richard L. Goerwitz is right.  All of this is standard on the Macintohsh.
Ever since the Mac II came out in 1987, all System releases have patched
the ROM Text editor to use Script Manager. Script Manager lets you chain
multiple national keyboards off the ADB bus, or remap the current keyboard
with a single mouse click.

It handles language systems that write from right to left, and those that
write from left to write, it  handles mixing them on a single line, and
selecting a portion of that line with the mouse. Think about it: a
selection that is contiguous in memory will not be on the screen. 

It handles sorting according to the rules of the country (in Spanish, I've
heard, "ch" sorts after "cz".)

It handles specifying numeric formats (such as the spreadsheet
equivalent of a fortran format statement) in one national format, in a
program written in a second language, for a customer who will be using
a third langauge.

It handles conversion to non-western calendar systems, such as the
Japanese in-the-year-of-the-emporor or the arabic hours which are based
on the local length of the daylight. You use a cute piece of software that
lets you point at a world map, or type in a city name, if you don't know
your latitude or longitude.

It handles mixing multi-font characters, such as Japanese, with single
font characters, and the problems that causes for string searching
(can't match in the middle of a character.) (JNSI chars take two bytes
each.)

It handles languages that justify text by adding extra white space
(like English) and langauges that justify text by making the letters
wider, (like arabic). Think of the problems justifying a mixed English
Arabic line.

It handles languages where the glyph denoted by a byte differs
depending on whether that character is at the beginning, middle, or end
of the word. (for example Hebrew's "mem", "mem-sofeet") In arabic there
are many characters that look different depending on whether they are at
the begginning, middle, or end of the word. As you type, the previous
character is redrawn appropriately, and the current character is drawn.

99% of non-wordprocessor application programs already call TexEdit to do text
handling for them. They become multi-lingual immediately when run on a Mac
that has had the appropriate national interface system file placed in the
system folder.

Word processing programs, and other text-handling programs that don't use
text edit can call Script Manager directly.

Apple also provides a tool to let the informed user change the menu key
equivalents, all the menu & prompt text, and the windows containing the
text (translation usually makes strings longer.) of their existing
binaries. (Compilers on Macintosh use a run-time linkage to dialogs and
strings, so they can be made larger safely.)

Apple sent free copies of all the national interface systems files they've
published to all their developers on a CD ROM called "Phil & Dave's Excellent
CD."  An early version of the Script Manager documentation is contained in
Inside mac Vol. 5. The current version of the Script Manager documentation
is on the CD. It is also available on paper from the Apple Program
Developers Association. (which everyone calls APDA.)

As a developer, I get the feeling from Apple that they are serious about
this. That they want all the developers to make their software fully
compatible with Script Manager (most old programs don't call the script
manager to verify that they haven't matched a string in the middle of a
Japanese character.) I've tried their software, and it works. What kind of
free software have you gotten from your o.s. vendor lately?

> The mac is a detour in the inevitable march of mediocre computers.
> drs at bnlux0.bnl.gov (David R. Stampf)

--- David Phillip Oster          -master of the ad hoc odd hack. 

Keith Sproul, head of microcomputer support at Union Carbide, NJ, complained
about the poorly digitized fellatio on an IBM porno program. "Mac is better
on everything, and this is no execption."  -- "Computer Porn at the Office"
by Reese Erlich, _This_World_, S.F. Chronicle, p.8, Aug 13, 1989

Arpa: oster at dewey.soe.berkeley.edu
Uucp: {uwvax,decvax}!ucbvax!oster%dewey.soe.berkeley.edu