🚀 go-pugleaf

From mod.computers.ibm-pc ...

> The most popular CHINESE CHARACTER PACKAGE so far is the KCCDS 
> system.  You can mix English with Chinese characters, and it 
> supports lots popular software packages: LOTUS 1-2-3, DBASE III, 
> .....etc, 

I am sorry KCCDS is a typing error, it should be KCMDS.
 
>> We looked at KCCDS.  While a nice enough package, it has drawbacks.
>> What killed it for us was its size -- since it takes about 280K to 
>> run, wasn't enough memory left over to run our application under
>> it.

     I have been running KCMDS with some large programs for about
9 months, so far I don't have any problems yet. My clone PC has
512K and lots of clone dealers are selling PC with a standard 640K
nowadays. Besides, the memory size KCMDS uses CAN be specified.

>> While it does indeed allow you to run Lotus 1-2-3 (for instance),
>> don't plan on having a spreadsheet of any reasonable size.

     In IBM PC, a byte is used to represent a single character,
and each character has a corresponding display attribute. I am
not sure about the display attribute in KCMDS, but each Chinese
character takes only two bytes. Thus the spreadsheet size you can
have is between 67% to 100% of the spreadsheet size you can have
in English.

>>                       ...... While KCMDS may be the 'most popular',
>> DALT is the most widely-used -- over 40,000 installations (in China,
>> Korea, Japan, and U.S. academic and government).  It requires a
>> Hercules graphics card, and at $965 it's not cheap, but...

     KCMDS has been on the market for less than a year. In Taiwan
alone, it has over 10,000 installations, or 60% of the market.
The population in China, Korea, Japan, and U.S. is around 100 times
the population in Taiwan.

     The price of KCMDS is $140/$170 for PC/AT. I agree a
Mercedes 450 is better than a Datsun, with 6 times the price.

>> To begin with, it handles 11 languages (Chinese, simplified Chinese, 
>> Japanese [both Kana and Katakana], Korean, Thai, Russian, Greek,
>> English, Arabic, Hebrew)

     KCMDS is designed for the bilingual market, the philosophy
behind bilingual software is to provide a bridge between a non-
prevailing language with the world's prevailing language -- English.

     I know people who understand 3 or 4 languages, but 11 is
probably attractive for the United Nations or some reserach institutes.

     Manufacturer of KCMSD has helped develop other English/Whatever
packages, the I don't think they have intention to combine bunch of
non-prevailing languages.

>>                          -- and actually does translation (both
>> transliteration and grammatical processing), rather than merely 'word
>> processing'.  Additionally, it disambiguates input:  if you enter 
>> "He looked at the girl with a telescope", it will ask (in whichever
>> language was used for the input) who has the telescope -- the girl or 
>> the observer? 

     That is a good feature, I do not think Lotus 1-2-3 or dBase III
can do that either.

     Again, KCMDS is a GENERAL PURPOSE software, it is a bridge of
Chinese to many popular softwares:  Lotus, dBase, Lattice C, Turbo
Pascal, PE, Multiplan, Sidekick, ... and many others. Does DALT
do that too ?

>> Next, it's hardware-based (comes with a 1/2-card), so it's not only
>> faster but doesn't eat RAM.  In fact, it'll run on a 256K machine,
>> not that you'd want to do so.

     Hardware based may NOT necessarily mean it is faster. If the
fonts are stored in EPROM, its access time may be 2 times slower
than if the fonts are in RAM. KCMSD also runs on 256K machines.

     Back to the software/hardware issue, I do not think Lotus or dBase
will be as popular if a "1-2-3 Hardware Card" or "dBase Hardware Card"
is required to run the software.

>> Rather than using stored bit-maps, characters are generated 
>> algorithmically ...

     KCMDS designers chose the bit-mapped technique because they
want KCMDS to be upgradable to survive the fast technology
evolution -- laser printing, desktop publishing, and more memory.
Most languages with non-alphabetical graphic type characters are
very delicated proportioned, only bit-mapped technique can survive
the laser printing (or even the Epson LQ-800) technology.

     KCMDS is available from:    Jumbo Software
                                 264 North Whisman Road, Suite 16
                                 Mt View, CA 94043