Re: Hallucination or possibility?

[Nathan Sivin nsivin@xxxxxxxx]

Thanks for the clarifications about XYShell from Robert H.

Yes, the NB people have been talking about all sorts of things,
but when I try to elicit a statement of intent that transcends
the vapor variety, it all becomes extremely vague.

Furthermore, in my correspondence with Anne Putnam on this issue,
no one seems to be aware that Windows from 98 on supports
Unicode, which makes all the proprietary kludges for Chinese and
Japanese input obsolete unless (like, say, TwinBridge) they
support it too. For some time I have been creating files that
contain real Unicode Chinese, using TB and Word. I still don't
care for the latter, but thanks to a number of macros and key
reassignments, it will now do a fair number of things in a
reasonable way (that is, more or less identical with XY). Anyone
running Win98+ can *read* the Chinese in such files without
needing TwinBridge or anything else, because of the Win Unicode
support.

People using Win2K don't even need a Chinese input program; the
OS includes Unicode input, and includes one full Unicode font
that includes every language. My point is that the programming
problem for Win98 is Unicode support and font, not
Chinese-Japanese.

NB, to sum up, is of no use to me until it catches up with the
modern world. Too bad, because any number of people who use >1
language under Win98 would jump at the chance to buy the program.
*No* other Win98 word processor can do the job without separate
input programs.

Cheers,
--
Nathan Sivin
History and Sociology of Science
University of Pennsylvania
Philadelphia PA 19104-6304
(215) 898-7454
nsivin@xxxxxxxx