3.766 Daedalus; tutorials; Chinese; plagarism (133)

Willard McCarty (MCCARTY@vm.epas.utoronto.ca)
Mon, 20 Nov 89 21:02:11 EST

Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 3, No. 766. Monday, 20 Nov 1989.


(1) Date: Mon, 20 Nov 89 08:07:00 EST (25 lines)
From: islhad@es.uit.no
Subject: RE: 3.764 Daedalus? (46)

(2) Date: Mon, 20 Nov 89 12:13:42 EST (11 lines)
From: Jan Thomas <ACC00JMT@UNCCVM>
Subject: Re: 3.747 queries: tutorials

(3) Date: Mon, 20 Nov 89 08:42:48 EST (58 lines)
From: Tom Nimick <0632281@PUCC>
Subject: 3.681 standards for character sets: Chinese

(4) Date: Sun, 19 Nov 89 04:43:23 IST (9 lines)
From: db <BOYARIN@TAUNIVM>
Subject: 3.758 plagarism, cont. (35)

(1) --------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Mon, 20 Nov 89 08:07:00 EST
From: islhad@es.uit.no
Subject: RE: 3.764 MouseWrite? G. Miro? Daedalus? (46)

In answer to Michael Jennings' inquiry about Daedalus, let me add
the little I know about machines and pricing. I believe I saw it
running on IBM machines--at least, I remember that the UTexas computer
lab was endowed by IBM Corp., so it follows! And, last spring
when I inquired the price of the program, I was told it was around
$5000--remarkably inexpensive it seemed to me at the time, for what
it seems to do. This does not, of course, include the cost of
networking the machines.

In addition to John Slatin, whom I mentioned last time as a satisfied
user, you might want to contact one of the developers: Col. Hugh
Burns, who runs the Air Force Human Resources Lab in San Antonio
and knows all there is to know about the program. Unfortunately,
I don't have an e-mail address for him; but if anyone is seriously
interested it might be worth a phonecall to get it: (512) 536-2981.
[Burns' number]. Or perhaps another Humanist can give a fuller,
more up-to-date description than I have. . . .

Helen Aristar-Dry
U. of Tromsoe

(2) --------------------------------------------------------------19----
Date: Mon, 20 Nov 89 12:13:42 EST
From: Jan Thomas <ACC00JMT@UNCCVM>
Subject: Re: 3.747 queries (124)

I would be more than happy to supply these folks with copies of some of our
tutorials. As you know, we developed them in an effort to save ourselves from
being stretched way too thinly. We are currently putting them together in
WordPerfect format on the Mac. If they are interested, just let me know and I
get provide them with copies.

jan
(3) --------------------------------------------------------------66----
Date: Mon, 20 Nov 89 08:42:48 EST
From: Tom Nimick <0632281@PUCC>
Subject: 3.681 standards for character sets (92)

REPLY TO 11/01/89 20:51 FROM MCCARTY@VM.EPAS.UTORONTO.CA "Willard McCarty":
3.681 standards for character sets (92)

Based on the response to Michael Sperberg-Mcqueen's posting
about fonts and character sets, my field of Chinese Studies is
not well represented in the readership of Humanist.

I feel that a full set of Chinese characters is essential to
at least ninety percent of the people in the field of Chinese
studies and is important for people studying Japanese history as
well. Therefore I feel that a two-byte standard or a new standard
with a greater number of bits is essential. Scholars of East
Asia need to be able to cite texts that use a full range of
Chinese characters in their publication and scholarly
correspondence. As things stand now, an electronic journal for
Chinese studies must necessarily exclude many kinds of
scholarship and all citations of sources.

Romanization is barely adequate for materials in the
colloquial style of Chinese that has been increasingly used since
the May Fourth movement in 1919. The dominant forms of
romanization, Wade-Giles and Pinyin, are usually used without any
indication of tone, which is an integral part of every Chinese
syllable. When tone indication is desired it is usually done
with diacritics, which are difficult to represent with the
current minimum character sets. For those who are concerned
about an occasional diacritic, imagine the problem where
ninety-five percent of the syllables need diacritics. There is a
romanization that represents tone with spelling changes, Gwoyeu
Romatzyh or National Romanization, but it is not widely known.

Even if there were an adequate standard romanization, that
would still not be adequate to represent the written idiom
usually called Classical Chinese. This term is misleading
because this idiom has been used in a variety of styles as the
exclusive form of scholarly discourse up to 1919 and may still be
encountered today. This written idiom depends upon graphic
representation for meaning; it cannot be adequately represented
in phonetic transcription. Therefore, any character set without
a full set of Chinese characters will be a grossly inadequate
tool for most people in Chinese Studies and for Chinese scholars
in a number of other fields.

Back in June and July, in the flurry of activity on the
computer bulletin board on China, there was a discussion of just
this problem and experiments using Pinyin with and without
diacritics to communicate in Chinese. The results were almost
unintelligible and not well received. Now that the links to
Japan and Taiwan (and some minimal links to the PRC mostly for
scientific correspondence) are in place, the need for a more
adequate character set can only increase.

Tom Nimick
Graduate Student in Chinese History, Princeton University
(4) --------------------------------------------------------------13----
Date: Sun, 19 Nov 89 04:43:23 IST
From: db <BOYARIN@TAUNIVM>
Subject: 3.758 plagarism, cont. (35)

In reply to J. Kessler pn plagarism:

I do not know the difference between creating and producing a text. And
every text has had a prior incarnation. I suppose that means I'm not a
humanist.