Re: OS/2 Etc.

[Robert Holmgren]

Hmmmm, I'm kind of attached to char-based editors. The speed, the easy
portability to other platforms, the idiot-proof ASCII aspect that allows
generic editing/GREP-like file searches for strings/etc -- these are important
attributes of XyWrite. Otherwise you gotta go graphics & accept the
consequences: thick eyeglasses, 21-inch monitors positioned across the room,
radiation-proof space suits, slow&gooey screen paints. Most important, it's
just plain hard-to-read. But I agree that there has to be provision for the
practical use of many more than 256 chars. I just wish it didn't have to be
done in a graphical way! I don't have much need of WYSIWYG (care what it
says/don't care what it looks like). I'd rather replace ASCII 256 with a
character-based 65K set -- is that what Unicode is? Which WPs support Unicode?
I've never heard of one. OS/2 certainly supports 16-bit char sets and they're
nothing new, witness the Chinese/Japanese/Korean sets; but for these you need
dedicated word processors & video adaptors (as you must in WinNT, if Unicode is
truly a char set and not graphics). In CONFIG.SYS, the setting "SET IPF_KEYS="
takes either SBCS (single byte char set) or DBCS (double byte char set). For
at least five years there's been a 16-bit German set that contains all the
Latin characters and diacritical combinations found in European languages or in
Latinate transliterations of world langs -- but its for UNIX. My publisher
mentions it often & thinks I'm a rube not to use it.

Isn't it funny how real, obvious needs like this are just ignored for years &
years, and then suddenly they're pressing? Ten years ago I couldn't get
anybody to listen, much less care, about the need for handling minimum of two
offbeat languages in one char set. (True, true, there were two guys in
Brooklyn who wanted Hebrew & English -- but Cyrillic?? Communists only, fuhget
it. The point being, that even when the issue came up, all anybody really
wanted was a local fix -- Thai! Malayalam! -- not a permanent theoretical
solution to the whole problem.) Eventually I wrote -- just for personal use --
software (Alterfont) that created personalized video fonts, and corresponding
bit-mapped characters for laser printers. A mighty pretty two-language
solution, so long as you didn't need multiple point sizes. I still use those
matching char sets today, just to have the convenience of character-based word
processing in Asian languages that can be written with Latin chars and ample
diacritics. In the short term, 256 chars is still a lot of chars and, let's
face it, there's so much visual dead wood in the default ASCII set, you can
easily accommodate two sets of chars in 256 chars. What I haven't yet found is
a utility that takes a standard-size bit-mapped font and turns it into a
scalable outline, which could then be transformed into any point size.

Well, I certainly agree with Brandeis that it's more important to clear your
calendar than anguish over a decision. It just spoils the whole weekend. You
remember how King Solomon threatened to cut that baby in two, as a shortcut to
determine who was the real mother? The real mother would say it _wasn't_ her
kid, in order to spare its life? Hey, everybody else was traumatized, but he
was home by noon.