Subject: Re: New Chinese OS for Macintosh (6.03)

From: Ed Lai <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 28 Oct 90 08:19:47 -0800

>(1)  (a very serious one!)  New system use the GB code (the same as in
>CCDOS), while the old system (CH-4.3) use shift GB, so ALL my text
>files created by my old Chinese OS cannot read!!!   They are all
>displayed as junk characters, including the file names.

This indeed a serious problem. It annoys me so much that I have been
refusing to use Simplified 6.03, and I did not try to adopt Cihui
1.8 to the simplfied system until last night. However we should not
say the New system uses GB, it uses CCDOS GB or (HGB as Fung Fung Lee
calls it), but it is not pure GB. GB is 7 bit and not 8 bit. In
practice people need to modify GB to use it, both SGB and HGB are
such variation. The fact that you do not use HGB does not mean
you do not use the GB standard, using HGB is as much a variation
from pure GB as is SGB. HGB is the laziest way to do it, just set
all the high bits to distinguish it from ASCII. Then what about
high bit set in high byte and high bit clear in low byte, well,
that is reserved for GB 3 and higher. This means that when we uses
GB 3, they are mixed together with GB 1 and 2 and slightly ahead
of GB 1 and 2. What a brilliant choice.

Yet people misunderstand all these and think that HGB is the GB
standard, so if you are not using it you are not using the GB
standard. Then some fool at Apple come to the same conclusion
and switch over without any warning. Actually there is a good
reason to use SGB instead of HGB in the Mac. Mac text data is
8 bit and not 7 bit. There are all sort of symbols in the
high bit bytes, like copyright, TM, open quotation, end quotation
etc. In CH-4.3 they are reduced but there is still room for
a number of them. But now with HGB they are almost all elminated.

The sensiable solution would have been to keep using SGB, and
for compatiablity with the CCDOS world, you never directly
access their file from a disk anyway, so you have to go
through Apple File Exchange to get the file, and the conversion
can easily be make at that time. But sensiable solution is often
ignored in favor of stupid ones.

>        And now come back to the problem of the Chinese system 6.03:
>Does anyone write a utility to convert the old GB code (shift GB) to
>the new one?  Is there an easy way to convert my chinese file created
>on the old system?  I look at the AppldpF{le Exchange Utility, but
>there is nothing for this purpose.  Also, for text file, it might be
>easy to convert, but what about text in HyperCard?  (I think the
>convenient way is to write it as a FKey to convert a certain selection
>of text).

Actually the AppleFile Exchange that comes with 6.03 should do the
job for text file, but for non-text file that won't do you any good.
My solution as usual, is a CNVT for Clipboard Magician to do the
conversion from SGB to HGB.

/* Disclaimer: All statments and opinions expressed are my own */
/* Edmund K. Lai                                               */
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