🚀 go-pugleaf

Here are the consolidated answers to the original message from
Susan Lasovick <lasovick@world.std.com>:

     I am assisting a development team to develop a good strategy for
     supporting Japanese and Chinese on a DG Aviion platform.  The geographic
     markets are Japan, Hong Kong, and Singapore.  Taiwan and mainland China
     will follow.  Ken's book answers all questions about Japan.  I wish
     however to ensure that my recommendations indicate the most expedient
     implementation of both Japanese and Chinese.  The ideal solution of
     course would be an ISO 10646-1/Unicode 1.1 implementation, but political
     and market issues surrounding this new standard and encoding method
     prevent me from going in this direction immediately.


     Choices are:


     		Codeset Standard   Encoding Metho  Input Method  Font Source

     Hong Kong	Big5		   Big5,EUC:pkd/cmp   ?		 ?
     		GB?	           GB, EUC	      ?          ?


     Singapore	GB 2312-80(0)	   GB, EUC:pkd,cmp    ?          ?



     Taiwan          Big5		  Big 5,EUC:pkd,cmp    ?          ?


     Main.China      GB-2312-80(0)     GB,EUC:pkd,cmp       ?          ?
                     GB (1-5)?	  " "    " "           ?          ?
                     this ? applies
                     to Singapore
                     market, too.
                     Are 7K chars
                     enough to provide
                     robust support of
                     Chinese?

     The above questions target internal code- which for the moment is my
     client's only concern- to distribute information and applications via
     proprietary terminals and software (networked through DGAviion servers)
     to the global financial and investment community.  However, the day may
     come when my client wishes to support multilingual email and multilingual
     application interactivity, and I also welcome all external codeset
     support recommendations and experience.  I have just purchased the
     wonderful 'An Introduction to Chinese, Japanese, and Korean Computing' by
     Jack K. and Tomothy D. Huang, and recommend it as an excellent
     reference.  I admire the authors for their complete honesty and high
     level of aethetic sensibility along with their technical competence.

     Regarding Chinese input, I am aware of the following input methods - but
     would appreciate feedback on experience/recommendations in specific
     markets of HongKong, Singapore, Taiwan, Mainland China:

     PinYin- I have used this method myself-based on Western phonetics
     ZhuYin- based on Chinese phonetics- but for which markets? Taiwan?
             HongKong? Singapore? Mainland China? all?
     Quwei-  Targets non-programmers according to TwinBridge by PC express-
             yet seems to resemble kuten? Is this a popular method? Are there                Chinese or Chinese/English dictionarie
             dictionaries give defintions + quwei.  Any good on-line Chinese/English
             dictionaries?
     Telegraph code- Is support required?
     Simple-Stroke(radical)-

     GB Code- I tend to think of this as an encoding method- but apparently also
               used for input- Is it a good way for programmers to input brief strings         of text to be used as context-sensit
               to Singapore, Mainland China. Also  GB to Quwei seems to be similar
               metaphor to that of JIS to Kuten.
     Big5Code- Is it necessary to use HKUBig5 to support Hong Kong?  Again Big5 to
               to Quwei relationship possibly helpful for certain tasks.

     I see many tables and conversion utilities available ifcss.org, crl.nmsu.edu- am
     not sure how to select- can anyone make suggestions?  Someone has mentioned notion of
     'preprocessor' to me as corresponding to Japanese FEP- I think the Twinbridge utility might fall into this category.  Are ther


Jeff
INSOFT-L List Manager

*========================================================================*
 Jeff Bowyer                         EMail:
 Computing Center		     jbowyer@cis.vutbr.cz
 Technical University of Brno
 Udolni 19, 602 00 BRNO
 Czech Republic
*========================================================================*


Sender: Glenn Adams <glenn@metis.com>
        Technical Manager, Unicode Consortium

     The ideal solution of course would be an ISO 10646-1/Unicode 1.1
     implementation, but political and market issues surrounding this new
     standard and encoding method prevent me from going in this direction
     immediately.

That sounds like a rather weak excuse.  Remember, the customer is only
interested in the results.  If a product provides the same or better
service than the customer expects using 10646/Unicode, then why not use it?
If you don't want to, you don't have to tell the customer that it really
uses 10646 inside the product as long as it appears to support their
beloved encodings on the outside.  The customer will thank your foresight
someday when they really need the capabilities of 10646/Unicode.


Sender: Kenneth Cheuk <cheuk#m#_kenneth@msgate.corp.apple.com>
Subject: RE: Chinese/Japanese Implementation

Some information for your reference :

The Zhuyin input method is also called the "bo po mo fo" input method. It's
used in Taiwan. Taiwan provides training in Zhuyin for all students.

The Quwei and GB Code input method is not commonly used by ordinary users.
Users who use these may be professional typists who memorize all the codes
and also with custom-made characters which do not have mappings from any
input method.

I don't it's necessary to use HKUBig5 coding to support Hong Kong. Big5
should be enough for traditional Chinese characters. If you are providing
simplified Chinese characters solution, GB is the choice. (It's the standard
in Mainland China)

Please note that different input methods are used for traditional and
simplfied Chinese. Traditional Chinese input methods include : Cangjie (a
radical Input method-abbreviated IM), ZhuYin (phonetic IM), DaYi (radical
IM), PinYin (phonetic IM). Simplified Chinese IMs are WuBi Xing (radical IM),
PinYin (phonetic IM) and variants of these.

Please also note that there are different IMs being developed by users in
Taiwan, Hong Kong and China. Those are just mappings and tables contain
corresponding codes and Chinese characters. Please consult any handbook on
the ETen (Yi Tian) Operating System for further details.

Unicode is of course an emerging standard. But a rising star could be CCITT
standard. I don't have current information for this. Sorry.


Sender: susan lasovick <lasovick@world.std.com>

[Note from Jeff: Here's Susan's response to Glenn's answer above.]

Dear Glenn,

You sound as if you are a Unicode member- and so am I!  I do not feel
negative about Unicode/ISO10646- to the contrary- but the most important
thing I have learned through my 15+ years of international marketing
experience in the small systems/solutions arena- is - listen to your
customers. The problem with arbitrarily deciding to implement any design
scheme without the buy-in of your marketplace is that you can be left
with a fully stocked inventory at the end of the day.

Personally, I believe in the inevitability of a Unicode- but not all
geographic markets agree with me!

In addition, there are some issues surrounding double-byte allocation for
all characters, even those normally allocated a single byte under other
standards- but these are minor issues compared to the objections and
concerns being raised on political grounds by certain markets.

I think an organism like Internet can act as acatalyst to stimulate
discussions that will lead to a common understanding and resolution of
issues such as this.