Subject: Re: The future of Chinese Computing

From: "J.B. WANG" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 26 Oct 90 14:49:00 EDT

I think Jiang has the point. Many things are just not up to
the personal likings or dislikings. Although I also believe
we are all smart guys, sometimes I just don't see things
eye to eye with friends like Dr. Yan who tends to believe
that we are world's master.

For 2-D things including the computer, PostScript has already
become the de facto output standard, and it is a waste of time
to debate on that. This is just like to doubt if ASCII is the
best for plain text.

Encoding standards were once a hot topic on Usernet, and  we
(including Ed Lai , myself and other people) had actually
worked out 8-bit <-> 7-bit converter for GB and Big5 for
mailing.
We also had UNICODE 16-bit encoding discussion at one time.

I agree that we should not pretend that we could create a
GB2 and make it an industry standard. This will create a
same mess as it is in Taiwan. UNICODE wants to include all
JIS, GB, KS and others, and make 1 to 1 convertion possible.
And that does not have to comply with a governmental
standard, but can include all.

The input method, too, have the same tendency, be it Tianma,
FeiMa, ch-series, Byx, Toshiba's Japanese WP, and mainland
China's new products. Pure single PinYin input will never
become acceptable. So, let's forget about those CCDOS.

JB Wang