Subject: CWIN 3.1 is available now

From: "Bill H. Liu" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 20 Jun 1993 00:00:53 -0500

Hi,

I just learned that MS finally released their Windows3.1 Chinese Edition in
Taipei. It is also available in North America through their authorized dealer
in L.A. The company, Chase Computers, also carries Eten's products. The
follows are some of their price list. (I am not advertising for them. Just
thought some of you may need this kind of information.)

Product                 After June 30, 1993     Before June 30, 1993
MS Windows3.1
Chinese Edition         $225                    $199

Upgrade from
Version3.0              $99                     $85

Chinese W4W
version 1.2             $640                    $599

Chinese Excel
ver. 4.0                $640                    $599

Dyna Font Card
5 fonts                 $600                    $500
10 fonts                $1100                   $900
15 fonts                $1160                   $1350

Lu Ding Font Card
11 fonts                $1200                   $1080
20 fonts                $1800                   $1620

Eten Chinese Systems
C16V5 ver 3.5           $85                     $75
C16H6                   $360                    $320
C16DH7                  $340                    $300

Advanced Dayi input
method                  $400                    $320

Chase Computers can be reached at (voice)818-300-8666 and (fax)818-300-8693.
For more information, please contact them directly.

Bill Liu

P.S. They will have BBS opened on 7/1/93 for techical support.

---

From: "Bill H. Liu" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 20 Jun 1993 19:28:04 CDT

> Does it support Simplified Script from PRC?
> What input method does it support?
> How does it support the Chinese script? Dual byte?
>
> Dr. Foo Meng How
> Kota Baru
>
>

Sure. Be glad. I will try my best to answer your three questions.

1. No. It does not support Simplifed Script. However, there is a workaround
for that. (See answer no. 3)

2. CWin3.1 adds two more input method over ver3.0. Now, it supports Tsang-chi
, Phonetics, Quick, Da-Yi, Array, and Big-5 encoding. If you want to use
Romanization method, you can buy a third-party software caled Hanin.

3. Yes. It uses double-byte encoding. If I remember correctly, it still
supports BIG-5 encoding scheme only. Cwin3.1 also support DBCS True Type font
standard. (Sorry, I don't know what DBCS stands for.) Therefore, any
third-party can provide their own fonts as long as they conform to DBCS
standard. Thus, the answer for your first question is that you may use
simplified script if you have the fonts. I know there are some sample Chinese
Postscript font available on Simtel.

Hope these would help. Goo luck.

Dr. Bill H. Liu

Mississippi State University

---

From: Wei Wang <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 20 Jun 1993 23:35:15 -0400

On Sun, 20 Jun 1993, Bill H. Liu wrote:

......
> standard. Thus, the answer for your first question is that you may use
......

DBCS stands for Double Byte Coding System (or Scheme). I just got the
impression from my once experience scanning through CWin 3.0 manuals.

I guess it must be very interesting if someone could post some information
on Microsoft DBCS.

Have fun!

Wang Wei

---

From: Edward E Walsh <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 23 Jun 1993 19:22:11 -0400

On Tue, 22 Jun 1993, J.X. Wang wrote:

> >      If you use the Chinese Windows. Why do you need W4W Chinese and Excel
> > Chinese?
>
> Because English Edition of W4W can not handle writing vertically. I guess
> this is the main reason why you wanna use the Chinese Edition.
>

I suppose other important advantages would be improved
cursor/backspace/delete handling of characters (recognizing them as single,
double-byte units), and automatic line-breaking between characters (in
unaltered W4W a long string of characters is considered one word since
there are no spaces or other punctuation marks separating them; when
forced to word-wrap it will just as soon break a character in the middle,
also). And with any great luck it will allow you to display symbols for
spaces, tabs, hard-returns, etc., without all the Chinese text going
berserk. And if we're really, really lucky it'll let you type in
upper-ASCII characters (like u-umlaut for romanization) without triggering
a Chinese character. Then I'll have something I can really write a
dissertation with and be extremely happy. Otherwise I'll be out 400 bucks
and extremely unhappy. Which I've sort of gotten used to in Chinese
computing.

By the way, has anyone who got the Microsoft East Asian software
development kit CD tried out Japanese Windows 3.0a? I installed it the
other day and found that parts of the screen kept blanking out (font
handling problems, I assume, or incompatibility with my Dell's S3 video
chip), and though the manual made it sound like you got at least a reduced
demo version of Microsoft's kanji/kana input method plus another method
which I thought was supposed to work completely), I couldn't get either to
work at all.  I was going to recommend a friend buy a fast PC clone and
use Japanese Windows and Japanese Word for Windows, but after that try-out
I'm ready to tell him to get a Mac with the Japanese operating system, a
third-party input method and use Nisus as a word processor.

I'm also curious about the Korean Windows, but not knowing Korean and
having had such bad luck with the Japanese program I didn't try it out.

/Ned
[email-masked]