Re: No Unicode!

[Dorothy Day day@xxxxxxxx]

On Sun, 2 Nov 1997, N. Sivin wrote:

> K. Frank mentioned an unfinished Chinese editor that I tried out in beta
> roughly 3 years ago. It definitely is not Unicode.
>
> Unicode has been the world standard for coding for several years now. The
> *only* PC operating system that supports it is Windows NT; even Macintosh
> does not. At one point Apple, a member of the original Unicode consortium,
> said they planned to (which would have moved me to Macintosh), but changed
> their minds. And there is no word processing *software* that supports it,
> so far as I know, for NT! TwinBridge, the widely used Chinese input
> program, offers a choice of one coding standard "compatible with" Unicode,
> but that doesn't mean beans until the latter is available to the average
> user. I have not seen any reason to bother with it.
>

I think this is an unnecessarily pessimistic view. After years of
frustration that the founding members of the Unicode Consortium saw no
urgency to actually implement the standard they pushed through with such
haste, momentum has actually built in the past two years to a point that
many products are doing just that--implementing Unicode.

Yes, NT is about the only OS that has built-in Unicode implementation.
But Win95 can (and does) accommodate programs that have Unicode
features, and so can (and do) the CJK Language Kits on the Mac. Java has
implemented Unicode, the major web browsers support any Unicode fonts
you can locate (and point you to such sources), and there are quite
well-developed IETF RFCs for using Unicode in email and other internet
applications (though not many mailing systems actually do so yet).

When memory and storage space were a pricier matter, the thought of
bulking up programs, files, and processing with 2-byte or 3-byte
characters was something most (American) software developers feared
their customers would reject. With those prices in the bargain basement
and more business customers now demanding the ability to reach
non-English-speaking markets, developers are finally getting a bit of
nerve, and products are coming out.

And reportedly, Win98 *does* incorporate native Unicode support.

	With restrained optimism,
	Dorothy


*****
Dorothy Day			
School of Library and Information Science
Indiana University
day@xxxxxxxx	
*****
	"He also surfs who only sits and waits."