Subject: Chinese WP with Mac TAI or CHI OS, Nisus, Cihui, HeapTool

From: Xincun Huang <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 11 Dec 1991 16:02:00 PST

>A colleague in the Comparative Literature department here asked me to
>recommend Chinese editing software for her department to purchase and

For anyone whose work requires Chinese word processing in English
documents (Chinese language teaching materials and academic
papers in my case), I strongly recommend the Apple Chinese
operating systems--CH 6.0.7 (simplified) or TA 6.0.x (traditional),
Ed Lai's Cihui, Nisus, and HeapTool.

Nisus is completely compatible with the Apple Chinese systems.  As
an English word processor, it is a generation ahead of anything else I
have seen on a Mac (or PC).  It is handles different scripts (English,
Chinese) intelligently, has complete WSYIWYG for Chinese and
English, and has all the macro and expression parsing (GREP)
capabilities you need when you work with Chinese and English, in
addition to dozens of other features.

Cihui:  Cihui is freeware by Ed Lai of Apple et. al. that allows for
input of words (ci) instead of just characters (zi).  It is available
for ftp at ahkcus.org.

HeapTool:  this is recommended to avoid crashes and loss of Chinese
input capability that can occur under Multifinder.  It is shareware
available from America On-line, SUMEX, etc.  After installing it we
have not had any problems with crashes.

I have spent hundreds of hours struggling with other systems such
as Tianma, Feima, Brushwriter (Mac), MacChina, etc.  The above
combination is not only the best but at the present time really the
*only* system that has the needed capabilities.  For example, input
is easy in Tianma, but it has few of the features you expect a word
processor to have (footnotes, spelling, italics, etc.) much less
WYSIWYG, GREP searches, DTP capabilities, etc.  We spent *more
time formatting* than typing in Chinese.  (I have not tried the Xin
Tianma)

Problems with this combination:

1)  It is not possible to switch easily between traditional and
simplified characters.  At ahkcus.org there is a conversion utility
which works very well, but it works with *text* documents, so you
lose all the formatting.  I have written a Nisus macro to solve this,
but it is a bit awkward.

2)  While the 48 x 48 traditional fonts are beautiful at 12 pt. (they
look better than my English outline fonts), the simplified fonts are
12 x 12 and can look blocky on a non-Postscript printer.

3)  Of course, TAI 6.0.6 will not run on the new LC-IIsi-Classic line.
Pacific Connections (800 745 0911) may be able to sell you the 6.0.7
version.

>5  Must be able to print on IBM graphics printers.

I'm not sure about this.

Roger Hart
UCLA

---

From: Kang Sun <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 12 Dec 1991 10:00:14 EST

Greetings,

> Date:         Wed, 11 Dec 1991 16:02:00 PST
> From: Xincun Huang <[email-masked]>
>

What is the current version of Nisu? I once heard that the most-recent
version of Nisu is not working with some version of the Mac Chinese
Operating System. Is it still true now?
> lose all the formatting.  I have written a Nisus macro to solve this,

One should be able to install Mac Bei on top of Mac Tai. At least this
is true in the case with version 6.0.5. Ed Lai also has CiHui input
method for Mac Tai. In a combined system, you can switch back and
forth with the simplified and complex characters. Simply choose the
different fonts, and the input method will switch accordingly.

> 12 x 12 and can look blocky on a non-Postscript printer.

There exist 64 pt fonts for Mac Bei. I don't know their availability
though. I thought it came with the Mac Bei, and apparently they
didn't.

> Pacific Connections (800 745 0911) may be able to sell you the 6.0.7

You should be able to get them free of charge from the d e v e l o p
magazine. They come with a compact disk in every issue. I don't know
what the most recent issue is. But Mac Bei and Mac Tai 6.07 should be
on one of the most recent issues.

BTW, all my experience was with 6.05 back a while ago. Due to my disk
space and my little use of Chinese system, I have taken the combined
system out of my Mac Plus. I cannot say if the combination will work
with 6.07. Maybe Mr. Wang HuangXing can say more on this.

Also, a Japanese has tried to modify the Mac Japanese 6.07 to
work under Mac OS 7.0x. He posted the patch on the newsgroup. I don't
if his patch will work for Mac Bei or Mac Tai. Mr. Sun had some bad
experience porting it to the Chinese system. Has anyone else tried?

> >5  Must be able to print on IBM graphics printers.

There might be driver for IBM graphics printer but I don't know if it
works with the Chinese system.