4.0126 Greek Fonts; Chinese WP (2/51)

Elaine Brennan & Allen Renear (EDITORS@BROWNVM.BITNET)
Thu, 24 May 90 16:24:15 EDT

Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 4, No. 0126. Thursday, 24 May 1990.


(1) Date: Thu, 24 May 90 10:32 -0300 (33 lines)
From: DENNIS CINTRA LEITE <FGVSP@BRFapesp.BITNET>
Subject: RE: 4.0106 Greek fonts

(2) Date: Thu, 24 May 90 08:19:30 EDT (18 lines)
From: Elliott Parker <3ZLUFUR@CMUVM>
Subject: Chinese WP

(1) --------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Thu, 24 May 90 10:32 -0300
From: DENNIS CINTRA LEITE <FGVSP@BRFapesp.BITNET>
Subject: RE: 4.0106 Greek fonts; Chinese word processors (42)

Christopher Bader claims that:

"One of the reasons linguists should prefer Mac's to PC's is that you
can't do this on a PC. The screen cursor on a PC cannot back up."

I think Mr Bader is slightly misinformed. What actually happens is that
the Mac works full time in a graphics screen (what this means is that
each pixel - picture element on the screen is controled by software).
IBM and clones work in two modes, text and graphics. Text mode works
with a predefined character set; this resides in ROM (Read Only Memory)
and makes for much faster screen updates. Some of the newer display
devices (EGA, VGA, 8514 and other variants) permit redefining the ROM
characer set, you can substitute the "factory" character set for any 256
or less characters of your own design. This still leaves the problem of
proportional spacing (the predefined character set has fixed spacing
between characters). The other mode PC and clones work under is the
graphic mode (of which there are several, but let's keep things simple).
Under graphics mode, the PC family can do anything a q Mac can do. When
a program takes advantage of graphics mode in the pc anything that can
be programed into a Mac can also be programed into a pc. In point of
fact, since the Mac has some inbuilt drawing tools (the so called
Toolbox built into the machine) it is easier to program the mac for some
applications which involve a lot of screen redrawing details, thus the
richer offerings of desktop publishing software for the Mac. But
inherently the PC has all the capabilities of a Mac, it is just that
programers are a bit lazy in taking advantage of them.

Regards
Dennis
(2) --------------------------------------------------------------26----
Date: Thu, 24 May 90 08:19:30 EDT
From: Elliott Parker <3ZLUFUR@CMUVM>
Subject: Chinese WP

I seem to have missed the original question, so this is a comment on the
answer about Chinese word processing.

One of the best sources is CCNET-L@UGA (std. listserv cmds., so to
subscribe send mail to LISTSERV@UGA with SUB CCNET-L <your name> in the
body. They discuss both commercial and PD/shareware Chinese WP
software, where to get it, development, and WP in general.

------------------------------------------------------------------------
Elliott Parker BITNET: 3ZLUFUR@CMUVM
Journalism Dept. Internet: eparker@well.sf.ca.us
Central Michigan University Compuserve: 70701,520
Mt. Pleasant, MI 48859 BIX: eparker
USA UUCP: {psuvax1}!cmuvm.bitnet!3zlufur