Subject: TurboWriter/Canvas

From: Martin Heijdra <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 26 Aug 1993 14:05:55 EDT

I have some new info on TurboWriter and Canvas as 7.1-compatible programs.

TurboWriter 2.2.1 and up is fully 7.1-compatible, with direct inline input.
There are three versions, Traditional Chinese, Japanese and, in Japan,
FlashWriter. They differ mainly in which language you want vertical writing
in: that is OR Chinese OR Japanese; the codes, not resources, supporting the
vertical modes are mutually exclusive for the moment. In horizontal mode,
since TurboWriter is script-manager compatible, these languages, including
Simplified Chinese and Korean, can be freely mixed. As I was told, TurboWriter
is mainly sold in Japan and Taiwan; the multilingual market in the US and
Australia is not yet large enough to warrent the effort of a truly multilin-
gual version including vertical writing.

In the US TradChinese and Japanese are available; there is no version which
would allow you to use vertical text under the SimplChinese OS, BUT the
(Trad)Chinese version since version 2.0.2
comes with a Big-5-coded Simplified Chinese FONT, so
that you can mix the two freely under the TradChinese OS. Of course, as some
people on this net don't seem to realize, SimplChinese <--> TradChinese is
NOT a one-to-one, or even one-to-many correspondence: one simplified character
can have more than one traditional equivalent, AND the opposite is also
true: one traditional character can have more than one simplified equivalent.
The translation of traditional to simplified is therefore never completely
automatic.

The TradChinese and Japanese TurboWriter versions in the US come with a
choice of English or Chinese/Japanese menus; the FlashWriter version sold in
Japan has no choice, only Japanese menus. Support of the Chinese version comes
from Pacific Rim, the Japanese version from SystemSoft.

As far as Canvas is concerned (a draw/painting program with many text capa-
biltities), they have a 7.1-compatible 2-byte version, which is guaranteed
to work with the two Chinese OS and Korean; it most probably is also compa-
tible with Japanese, but since there IS a fully localized Japanese version,
they do not want to guarantee it. The language of the menus is English.

There is a catch: this is NOT the discounted version available at mailorders;
for the compatible version, you have to contact Canvas (Deneba) yourself, and
pay the official price, $399, specifying that you want the 2-byte version.

Martin Heijdra, Gest Library, Princeton.