Marketing wizardry & handling of far-east languages.

[Chris Kern]

In article <5566 at tank.uchicago.edu> goer at sophist.UUCP (Richard Goerwitz)
writes:
>              ...  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)
>

Xerox markets sophisticated multilingual word processing software in
its ViewPoint product line.  We currently have word processing in 31
languages, including some difficult ones, such as Arabic, Chinese, and
Hindi, and will have 43 languages installed by the middle of next year.

We tend to use the software mono- or bi-lingually; typically, our
radio scripts are composed in one foreign language with a little bit
of English thrown in.  However, there is no limit to the number of
languages that can be included in a single document.  The typing
logic is sensible (except in a few cases where well-established national
standards mandate a typewriter-style approach to typing, although it
probably is sensible to follow the standard if that's how everyone in
that culture is taught to type).  Rendering is handled properly
on the user's video monitor as well as in the laser printed hard-copy.
Our native speaker users say the quality of the fonts ranges from
good to outstanding.

Essentially, everything works exactly as the user expects.  Some
genuinely difficult technical obstacles must be overcome to accomplish
that.  It is not just a matter of drawing the fonts properly.
(Imagine an English phrase followed by its Chinese translation,
drawn from a universe of 10,000 discrete Chinese characters, with
an intervening parenthetical expression in Arabic, which is written
right-to-left and where many of the individual letters can assume
up to four different shapes depending on their position within a
word.  Now imagine what the software has to do as you type that string
of words serially.  Or backspace over or otherwise edit part of it after
you have typed it.)  We're quite pleased with the quality of the
individual languages.  But the *generality* of the system is astounding.

Currently, ViewPoint runs on Xerox's proprietary Mesa processor, but
the company has announced plans to port its office automation software
to a UNIX platform (specifically, a SPARC processor produced by or under
license from Sun).

(I have no connection to Xerox except as a customer.)

-- 
Chris Kern			     Voice of America, Washington, D.C.
...uunet!voa3!ck					+1 202-485-7020