Subject: New Chinese OS for Macintosh (6.03)

From: Huangxin Wang <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 26 Oct 90 22:03:37 EDT

I just obtained the new Chinese OS 6.03 for Mac from the CD disk come
with the July issue (3rd issue of this year) of D e v e l o p Magazine
($10).  I am fortunate enough to find a CD ROM to down load it.  As
everyone believes, update version always better, so my expectation for
it was very high.   But so far it gives me big disappointment.  I
really wish that I did something wrong in the installation.  Here is
what I encounter:

(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 be read!!!   They are all
displayed as junk characters, including the file names.

(2)  Very unstable:  Since it comes without an installation script for
the whole system (only for the AppleShare), I had to install it by copy
the system folder to my hard disk.  But somehow it just crash when I am
typing the word "he2" ("river"), no matter whether I am in finder, or
in MacWrite.  Such crash is reproducible.  It even worse that after it
crashes, the CDEV file "pinyin", "bihua", etc, are corrupted.  Next
time when I boot, I cannot type in any Chinese character!  The only way
to cure it is to reinstall the original CDEV files.  I try many
combinations and eventually track down the problem:  if I choose
"pinyin" cdev, and check the option (1) Automatic; (3) "Chuzhi" (Keep
the characters on bar); (4) Choose using number; (5) Beginner, (with these
options the system will rearrange the character which you just
character),  then it will always bomb when you type "he2 ".  Right now
I have to keep the minimal configuration and default options to avoid the
crash (and I'm not sure whether I have really avoided it or not).

(3)  The most wanted improvement for the old system is the character
font, not the input method (which is already easy enough and much
better than a lot of IBM PC package on the market, except, in my
personal point of view, TianMa).  However, this new Chinese OS has no
improvement on the character font.  We still get those large
charatcers, combine with the clumsy looking Chicago font for the
English characters.  I believe that it's possible to use ResEdit to set
the default English character for Beijing to something more beautiful.
But should the user really have to go through all these?   I think the
ideal Beijing font should be Chinese characters combined with New York
14 or other typewriter like font).   At least the application font
should be such.

	Now let me talk about something more encouraging before all
these problem washing away your enthusiasm:  In general, IF the new
system WON'T crash, it has quite some improvements still comparing with
the old system:  (1)  Input is faster, since you can turn on a 64K
cache for character picking.  (2) the bar for picking characters is
very neat, with hierachical menu and tear off keyboard, which is really
helpful for "Bi3hua4" input (or when you mixing pinyin with Bihua
input).  (3)  To improve the input speed a little bit, now you can
group input; also single click (rather than double) to pick a
charatcer.  (4)  I can run MultiFinder, and if it won't crash, I
might consider to totally replace it for the regular English system
(6.05).

	Still it is in Macintosh way --- you don't have a manual (and
you don't need one to use).  I look up and down in the CD disk, and
indeed there are no documents related to this Chinese OS (there is all
the European language system, as well as 12 disk Taiwan system with
Kai-xu and song-ti fonts.  For some reason, there is no Korean  system
on the disk).  I supposed the systems themselves should be FREE (if
Apple should charge for it, it would not be just $10).  Actually it can
be ftp from the AppleLink ftp site, but I just don't know where is such
site (anyone knows?)  Also as it's a MACINTOSH system mean that you can
use a lot of Mac softwares without writing a specific word processor or
graphics program for Chinese.  (BTW, the top level word processor for
Chinese or other foreign language system is Nisus.  MSWord won't be
work properly to display chinese character, but so far I just use
MacWrite).

	Last week I had a chance to see a lot of Chinee word processor
demos at a far east language processing conference at Penn (thank Long
Zhihua!) I am surprised that Mac OS is in such a low key ---- almost
everything is on IBM PC, wth regular price around $200 (e.g.
BrushWriter for IBM: full version $700, student reduce version $80).
And I am also surprised to find that Mac is much better in the
character picking input method, --- for example, Mac is very tolerant,
you can mix pinyin and bihua input.  There is another class of word
processors which use a lot of Macro definition (like "jttqhh" to stand
for "jin-tian-tian-qi-hen-hao"), I think it's only good for fooling
around for demo (some list price $299).   Of course Mac can also do
this kind of macro (like in cihui input method by Ed Lai).  But the
best input method, I think, is TianMa, which does not use character
picking in inputting, --- the major difference is that you don't need
to keep your eye one the character bar to pick your characters, thus it
won't interrupt the user's flow of thinking.  You just keep typing in
pinyin and the program will convert it to Chinese for you (by context
or grammar).   Of course right now Mac OS is NOT a word processor, so
it's not fair to compare it with TianMa, but I think development effort
should be in this direction, and I see that Mac Chinese OS is a very
good platform for doing this.

	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 Apple File 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).

	Something is very obviously wrong --- it just should not be
this way, but it did happen to me.  Has anyone out there use the new
system?  Have you run into these problems and how to resolve them?

		Huangxin Wang, University of Pennsylvania