Subject: How to make it rolling?

From: "J. Ding" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 9 Feb 91 22:10:37 CST

Like Rupert said, I also learnt a lot from the previous discussion about an
ideal Chinese input/edit/encode/transfer/print system. Yes, if all the ideas
get realized, it's a powerful software package to be used in network environ-
ment. Coming with the nice picture is the tough question: how to make the baby
growing?

Apparantly we are not talking about normal word processing stuff which already
has its own market and brokers. With market support, the pure input/edit/print
functions are getting well developed with many people's tremondous work. That
means we should focus on the network flowing of Guo Biao Chinese(I emphasize
Guo Biao because the Big5 seems quite well ahead in this area with effort of
Hong Kong and Taiwan hackers).

It will be ideal if the current big Gou Biao makers(like CCDOS) come with a
comprehensive package to satisfy network/e-mail enthusiatists. But I don't
think they are convinced to do it now while there are few voices ask for it.

Although we have enough knowledgable people to make excellent programs, a good
software package like we have discussed still need market support. If we really
want to push the project, we have two blocks to go: 1) develop some simple
package without market support; 2). generate user needs for future market.

Developing network package has two options at current stage. 1) Building on one
of the commercial packages, like Yagui's zW program on GuoBiao CCDOS and Pai
Chou's Taipei-100 on Taiwan Chinese DOS. This approach will be the easiest if
the package we select already dominates the market. Unfortunately, it is not
the case among current GuoBiao world. We will find it tremondously difficult
if we ask the users(in our case, most are Chinese students) to pay money for
something they haven't found out much use. In the worse cases, you are talking
about asking someone to throw away his nice BYX package to pay for a CCDOS.

Another option is what I said develop an "independent" freeware. It will be
nice if it has all the functions that we need. But I don't think it is practica
l. I suggested to first develop a real time terminal emulator for reading only.
And create convertion batch for CCDOS/BYX to complement the input/print work.
The case becomes: if you just want to read, get it for free, you can still have
some fun. If you want to write something yourself or want to print it out, well
, you have to pay the buxs. It will both satisfy the current CCDOS & BYX users.
Even within a small scale and low information flow like Rupert's environment,
it is still a better way(my oppinion) to get started. I assume that you want
it get larger and larger.

Through this way I'm expecting to get more people start to involve into the
Chinese software market if we can give them enough fun through reading: for
example, through Chinese Version CND, Chinese BBS, Chinese visa/tax database,
etc. Until its usefulness get recognized will not the big progress be achieved.

The domestic software market failed to be set up due to the copyright tragedy.
Its serious damage on the domestic software development will prevent China from
hiTech for a long time. If we can take advantage of US market incentive to get
something done, we will save people in China tremendous time and money to work
on this. And equally important, we can make much use of it here too.

While we have many good experts give technical details, I just try to find out
an operational plan to proceed.

Jian Ding
Computer Support Specialist                   B366JDX@UTARLVM1
Library -- U. Texas at Arlington              [email-masked]

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From: [email-masked]
Date: Sun, 10 Feb 91 02:07:00 EST

I like JD's idea from a very different perspective.

As I said, I have a set of routines for displaying CC on
several PC video systems. (I discontinue the project because
I dwasn't sure how to proceed with the input part.) If
someone can tell me if there's a complete set of public
domain fonts available, I may be able to work it into
a dumb-terminal viewer.  (I remembered Ricky Yeung has
something archived somewhere, but I have not been keeping
up with this.)

The viewer can support 'zW' or 'HZ' or both.

The fonts would need to be in GB order.

Ya-Gui

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From: "Stephen G. Simpson" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 10 Feb 91 11:12:04 -0500

Ya-Gui <[email-masked]> writes:

> I have a set of routines for displaying CC on
> a dumb-terminal viewer.

I hope Ya-Gui goes ahead with this project.  It is exactly what is
needed for a convenient, inexpensive news/e-mail system using
simplified Chinese characters.  Ya-Gui's viewer would allow people to
read news/e-mail on any PC without a process of downloading,
converting, etc.

Those who want to post news or send e-mail would still have to edit or
create their files using an ASCII/GuoBiao editor, then run a very
simple program to convert to HZ or ZW.  These conversion programs are
freely available now (BASIC and C programs for the PC or Mac, a C
program for Unix).  The editors are also readily available -- Byx 1.1
(inexpensive shareware) for the PC, CXterm/Celvis (free) for
Unix/X-Window/OpenWindow.

By the way, here are some basic facts about HZ, ZW, and CCDOS that may
not have been mentioned here recently.  If you already know this
stuff, skip the rest of this message.

1. HZ and ZW are 7-bit file formats.  Both use only printable ASCII
characters and therefore can be transmitted by e-mail (except they
will be slightly damaged if transmitted through non-ASCII machines,
such as IBM mainframes using EBCDIC).  Both allow a mixture of Chinese
and English text.  Chinese is in 7-bit GuoBiao, English is in plain
ASCII, and the files contain simple codes to distinguish and switch
between the two kinds of text.

2.  The CCDOS file format is an 8-bit format, also allowing a mixture
of Chinese and English.  Chinese is in 8-bit GuoBiao, English is in
plain ASCII (7-bit), so there is no need for special codes to
distinguish the two.  (If you try to transmit one of these files over
e-mail, the high bits will be stripped, so you will be left with
something like an HZ file but with no codes to distinguish between
Chinese and English.  The codes could be inserted by hand in most
cases, thus producing an HZ file.  But it would be more convenient to
transmit the file in HZ form to begin with.)

3.  Please keep in mind the distinction between the CCDOS file format
and the CCDOS operating system extensions for the PC.  The CCDOS
operating system costs money and is tied to particular hardware.  The
CCDOS file format is free and hardware-independent and is the standard
used by most GB-based software (Byx, Chinese Wordstar, Celvis, CXterm,
Chtex, Poor Man's Chinese TeX, etc.)

4. The HZ and ZW file formats are free, as is the software for
converting between HZ, ZW, and CCDOS format.  The conversion software
is extremely simple, since all it has to do is add or remove high bits
and remove or add control codes.

5.  HZ and ZW are currently *not* widely used, but they are close
cousins of the CCDOS format, which *is* very widely used.

6.  In the ZW format, each line of text must be either all Chinese or
all English.  In HZ, you can mix Chinese and English on the same line.
In this respect, HZ is a little better than ZW.

7.  HZ files often have a tilde character (~) at the beginning of a
line, and so cannot be redirected to the Berkeley Unix /usr/ucb/mail
program in "standard input" mode.  This is a minor disadvantage of HZ.

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From: [email-masked]
Date: Sun, 10 Feb 91 17:01:00 EST

No, the CCDOS fonts don't have anything indicating the sizes.
The first 32 bytes specifies the font for the first GB character,
which is a space. Other characters follow in GB order.

Frequently a few zones following zone 5 or zone 8 are missing.
It seems to be those zones were not defined.

The CCLIB display fonts are 16x16. (I think 16x14 would have
been sufficient.)  The printer fonts are 24x24, with x and y
axes interchanged.

I am going to check around to see what public domain ffonts are
available at varous sites. It's going to be slow.

Ya-Gui Wei