A Newsforge article posits that a lot of the action in Linux development in the near future will be in Asia. Much of this is because in many parts of Asia, the Middle East, and Africa there is not as much entrenched IT infrastructure as in Europe and North America, so consumers will chose the most apt and economical solution available, without the burden of backward compatibility or prejudice. Also, with the concentration of electronics manufacture in places like Japan, Korea, Malaysia, and China, Linux is increasingly the OS of choice for devices.
I like the articles way of stating that Microsoft has locked everyone into it’s technology and .NET is going to continue to do this. American companies don’t embrace Linux like the rest of the world because everyone follows the Microsoft lead. There’s many programmers and developers like myself who won’t go for Microsoft and instead do the open source. I’ve stated it again and this is true, Windows 2000 is my Final windows OS. Linux will take over since I do most of my development there.
As far as development tools go the stuff branded as .net is topnotch. Everything else just pales when it comes to convenience and power. lets just wait for ximian to get mono fully functional(another couple of months) and watch ms suddenly lose the small grip that it has on the server market
Not sure how the client apps will do, but mono should run a lot of them. and most devs will probly choose to have their apps run on mono due to portability(would you rather use the mess called COM+ or have your app run on linux/unix other CPUs…etc for free)
Even if these countries do go for Linux, do you think MS will let them? If MS will bribe the governments -give them 10 million or something and they will install Windows! They bribed their way all the way to Ashcroft and the US justice dept, why not in poorer countries?
Well, I’m not too sure about other Asian countries besides India in terms of “bribing”, but in Malaysia, there is strick anti-corruption laws, and the newspapers are quick to point out stuff like these. But in Malaysia, most of the switch are done mainly on scalability and security reasons, not price.
As for bribing their way with Ashcroft (which IMHO is more like blackmail than bribery) and US Justice Department, trust me, with a case as huge as this, there would be some allegations about it with some proof in the press.
If Microsoft can’t bribe them then they’ll probably buy a few third world countries outright. And then use them as a PR move to show how much better the world thinks Microsoft products are compared to the competition.
Microsoft can bribe most places. No, its not like they will walk into a government office and hand a bribe cheque for 1 million dollars. They may give the money to “charity” or “philantropy” instead. You know, if you want that 3 million for AIDS research, or that campaign donation for re-election, you better use our products …
Face it — BeOS is dead.
Campaign donation for re-election? You’d best research how the American government works dear sir.
>>>>They may give the money to “charity” or “philantropy” instead. You know, if you want that 3 million for AIDS research, or that campaign donation for re-election, you better use our products …
Bill Gates’ charitable work has nothing to do with Microsoft. Grade 6 mathematics will tell you that he owns 8% of Microsoft — and in order to recoup that $24 Billion of donation, Microsoft’s market cap will have to more than double from $250 billion to over $500 billion. It is mathematically impossible to “make” money by his charitable work.
Secondly, American companies bribing foreign companies/governments is against US laws. And most countries have forbidden foreigners from donating to election campaigns.
Thirdly, the countries that accept bribes don’t have to worry about election campaigns because they don’t have elections in those countries in the first place.
Devices means embedded apps, ATMs, POS systems, handholds etc. Consumers are less likely buy into linux desktop, at least windows have far superior CJK support than linux – the sort of fonts rendering, Input Method Editors, dictionary, etc. Even Netscape uses these features on the win32 platform that are originally designed for IE (search Global IME Netscape on the net).
It is true that many small computer shops out there preinstalled Linux as the OS, but that is mostly for not paying M$ the license fees yet still staying legitimate at the store front. As soon as a computer is sold, a pirated copy of Windows will be installed eihter in the back room or by customer somewhere else. When any major windows software titles could be bought on CD for less than a buck, there simply isn’t any incentive for a consumer to use Linux. A few years back, M$’s strategy was that even if a guy attempted to use pirated software, it had to be something from M$, and that was a major reason behind the computer boom in a lot of areas in Asian, where a retail Windows’ MSRP is equal to the amount of money one could live very comfortably for two months.
> Bill Gates’ charitable work has
> nothing to do with Microsoft.
Right, whatever. I am not critiquing his charity work, by the way, I am just saying that if push goes to shove, MS will use anything, including using Philantropy, to advance their business agenda. I don’t know how informed you keep yourself, but they already tried it in Uganda, for instance.
> American companies bribing
> foreign companies/governments
> is against US laws.
Right, driving while drunk is against US laws as well. Have you ever been anywhere outside the US?
> the countries that accept bribes
> don’t have to worry about election
> campaigns
They certainly do. Like the US, for instance. Or why do you think Campaign finance reform is such a huge issue? Do you really believe these things or are you just kidding yourself?
ms can try to “bribe” develpoing countries, snd in some cases, may enjoy some success. But the rest of the world is aware of the tactics of US corporations ( I love the bit about being unburdened by backwards compatibility and prejudice, if only we could get a little of that in the US ), and there will be hold outs. Just look at the recent failure of an MS bribe for school/library network in Africa, and the adoption of linux/opensource for various government IT in South/Central America and Europe.
>>>I am not critiquing his charity work, by the way, I am just saying that if push goes to shove, MS will use anything, including using Philantropy, to advance their business agenda. I don’t know how informed you keep yourself, but they already tried it in Uganda, for instance.
That’s Microsoft’s giving of money and resources. And many corporations, including many anti-MS companies, are doing the same thing anyway. And it ain’t alot of money in total, nothing like the 20+ billion that Bill Gates personally have given. Either you are saying that Microsoft’s X million dollars is worth more than the SAME amounts that have been given by SUN (and other anti-MS companies) OR you are lumping Gates’ personal donations with the equation.
At least Microsoft is doing it for some financial sense. You take SUN, who buys StarOffice for 70 odd million dollars, started ranting and raving and giving away StarOffice for free to many third world countries — and then SUN finally figured it out that their biggest enemy is IBM and HP, not Microsoft.
>>>>Right, driving while drunk is against US laws as well. Have you ever been anywhere outside the US?
It is illegal to drive while under influence of alcohol in many other countries. However in those same countries, it is not illegal to bribe people/companies. The US government makes american companies criminally liable for bribery overseas.
>>>They certainly do. Like the US, for instance. Or why do you think Campaign finance reform is such a huge issue? Do you really believe these things or are you just kidding yourself?
Campaign financing reforms in the US are totally bogus. Both sides are already exploiting many of the loopholes . Besides that, I was talking about FOREIGNERS forbidding to give money to campaigns anyway, which has been in place even before the current reforms.
Actually, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation have donated a lot for this AIDS cause. And amazingly, most research labs not affliated with a huge greddy medicine company uses various versions of *nix, like Thailand’s universities uses either Irix or Solaris, I can’t remember.
Microsoft have never donated anything more than computers and/or software.
I also don’t see bribing a problem because the world’s fastest growing market (the market that sent us this economic misfortune, BTW :-), China, is even trying to replace US-designed processors. This is mainly for “security” and philosophical reasons.
So if Microsoft bribed Chinese officials, I doubt it would create a huge dent in the Chinese market. And once all the Chinese’s government offices are using Linux, Chinese companies, state-owned or private, would most probably start moving to Linux. And after the Chinese market is conquered, these Linux companies in China, like Red Flag, would come out full force and try to conquer foreign markets in Asia.
> Secondly, American companies bribing
> foreign companies/governments is against US laws.
> And most countries have forbidden foreigners from
> donating to election campaigns.
> Thirdly, the countries that accept bribes don’t
> have to worry about election campaigns because
> they don’t have elections in those countries
> in the first place.
It’s so sad to see a fellow computer-litterate person who has got such a weak grasp of how the real world works. I lack words. Please read a few history books and try to pick up a newspaper every now and then…
>>>It’s so sad to see a fellow computer-litterate person who has got such a weak grasp of how the real world works. I lack words. Please read a few history books and try to pick up a newspaper every now and then…
I think you are the only one without a clue on how the world works.
You either have to argue that Microsoft is the only company in the whole computing/IT industry that is doing the bribing or that SUN/Oracle and the rest of the anti-MS clan (Oracle actually got caught with the California bribing fiasco) didn’t spend the same amount of money greasing the wheel.
Somehow you believe that SUN and Oracle don’t have lobbying budgets as big as Microsoft — now that’s someone without a clue on how the world works.
Or that you are somehow using something less than grade 6 math and figured that Bill Gates can somehow “makes” his $24 billion donation back.
I’m not saying any such thing. If you read my input you cannot possibly come to the conclusion that I think that M$ is the sole devil in this history. What I am saying is this: Even though there may be laws in individual countries [like the USA] that forbid these kind of actions that doesn’t mean that the actors of the industries [mostly M$] will not try to pervert “proper and just conduct” every opportunity they get. They have got the money and the political influence to pervert almost any justice system they want, and they mostly get what they want too. Just look at what the ruling from Colleen Kollar-Kotelly a short time ago.
>>>>Even though there may be laws in individual countries [like the USA] that forbid these kind of actions that doesn’t mean that the actors of the industries [mostly M$] will not try to pervert “proper and just conduct” every opportunity they get.
Why is it that it’s mostly MS? Because they were found guilty of anti-trust actions.
Just because SUN, Oracle and the rest of the anti-MS clan weren’t found guilty doesn’t mean that they didn’t do anything wrong themselves — it only means that they negotiated settlements with various government agencies before they went to court.
>>>They have got the money and the political influence to pervert almost any justice system they want, and they mostly get what they want too.
In the IT industries, everybody is a billionaire. And the Oracle chairman was briefly ranked with more money than Bill Gates. You think these other billionaires don’t have the White House on their speed dial.
A lot of these negotiated settlements occured before any trials were scheduled and thus under the reporters’ radar. A lot of these negotiated settlements are buried in some footnotes in their annual reports. Doesn’t mean that they didn’t happen. And it doesn’t mean that it’s MOSTLY a microsoft problem.
It figures they like Linux.
Silly penguin, *nix are for kids.
Despite the all mighty Bill Gates himself visiting India and donating a rather large sum of cash and offering up free Windows ( which windows app’s code I don’t know ) source code to the Indian government as well as offering free licenses for Office XP and Excel to be used by all Indian universities and colleges. Despite all this Indian government has decided to leave it’s options open and push forward with Open Source/Linux development for it’s government infrastructure for use both inside and out of India.
Why you ask ? Well it’s simple….India wants to compete in worlds global IT and tech markets. You can’t compete against the big boys if you’re dependent on a closed source, proprietary OS that is made by another nation which comes with a hefty licensing agreement. Not to mention that India as a third world nation does not have the financial funds to support as some might call it the “M$ Tax” by being tied down to MS in both private and government sectors. To put it simply they don’t want to have their hands and legs bond to the MS bail and chain.
P.S. Apparently the free Office XP and Excel licenses that were being offered were so that MS and could come in and train Indian collage and university students in the ways of Office and Excel. So that ( in MS’s own words ) “Microsoft can properly prepare Indian college and university students for the future.” Needless to say some Indian officials felt insulted because as they put it “The global IT and Tech sectors of the future will require more then just learning Office and Excel skills in order for India to properly be able to use it’s graduate college and university stundents to be able compete effectively in those markets.”
Here in Taipei, I can go to any 7-11 and buy Mandrake 9.0 with an instruction manual off the rack for only about $10.
Indians who have read history may remember that the British invasion
of India began with a company. The British government later sent
an army to defend the interests of the Company.
Greetings everyone,
First let me reply to the “brilliant” individual that said BeOS is dead. No BeOS is not dead – Be Inc. is. The OS itself is evolving. Maybe not at a pace we would all like … but it is none the less.
What has good-ole-Bill done for me lately in the wallet. Nothing! Bubba Gates is going to figure out one of these days that “bullying” companies into compliance is not the way to go. I say screw him and the OS he rode in on. Power to the people via *nix or POSIX-compliant OSes.
>>>What has good-ole-Bill done for me lately in the wallet.
Well, your auto insurance company uses your monthly premium to invest in the stock market. Without Microsoft, your rates would have increased. Same thing for your life insurance, pension plan, retirement saving fund….
Man this is the funniest post I have ever read in my life.
unless the folks that own more of the company think he is still the best to be chairman (which is very unlikely since those that own the most of a company don’t like others haveing control oveir their large investment)
Bill Gates is still the largest shareholder, despite the fact that he owns only 8% of the stock. Nothing wrong with that, very normal. You don’t need to own 51% of a company to control it.
Bill Gates and Steve Balmer receive ZERO stock options for the last decade or so. If you bring in any other person to do their job, the new guys would be receiving BILLIONS of dollars in stock options. Why would Microsoft shareholders want to dethrone Gates and Balmer.
Consumers are less likely buy into linux desktop, at least windows have far superior CJK support than linux – the sort of fonts rendering, Input Method Editors, dictionary, etc.
I don’t know what kind of flower you’re smoking, but Linux offers ALL end users far better Asian language support than Windows does. Windows limits their Asian language support, even in XP, to those markets. Linux, on the other hand, supports all the languages regardless of where you bought or obtained your copy of Linux.
Even Netscape uses these features on the win32 platform that are originally designed for IE (search Global IME Netscape on the net).
First of all, I noticed you have updated your vocabulary since we last discussed I18N support.
I don’t run Windows, but if Netscape is using the Microsoft IME, that is because it is the only way on non-Asian language versions of Windows to enter Asian text (well, you could buy an add-on product like Twin-Bridge or something, but you can’t simply install a 3rd Party IME such as ATOK on an English version of Windows and have it work). You can enter Asian text on Linux without jumping through these hoops.
It is true that many small computer shops out there preinstalled Linux as the OS, but that is mostly for not paying M$ the license fees yet still staying legitimate at the store front.
There is no law that says you have to put an OS on a machine to sell it. I buy my computers OS free all the time.
As soon as a computer is sold, a pirated copy of Windows will be installed eihter in the back room or by customer somewhere else.
That is almost always the case whether your machine comes with Windows or not. As soon as a new version of Windows comes out, most people pirate it and put it on their machine.
When any major windows software titles could be bought on CD for less than a buck, there simply isn’t any incentive for a consumer to use Linux.
Perhaps for some customers this is true, but it’s not for me. I have a free subscription to MSDN that my company buys for me every year. Therefore, I have legal access to most Microsoft software, including Office, VisualStudio, Windows, Visio, MapPoint, etc. for free. However, I don’t use it unless I have to for work. I prefer using Linux. I imagine there are a large number of people that feel this way.
A few years back, M$’s strategy was that even if a guy attempted to use pirated software, it had to be something from M$, and that was a major reason behind the computer boom in a lot of areas in Asian, where a retail Windows’ MSRP is equal to the amount of money one could live very comfortably for two months.
Piracy is the main reason that Microsoft is where it is at today. If Microsoft would have introduced product activation back in the days of DOS, I seriously doubt Microsoft would be the behemoth they are today, and I also doubt that computers would be as ubiquitous as they are today. Hooray for piracy!
“…Linux offers ALL end users far better Asian language support than Windows does. Windows limits their Asian language support, even in XP, to those markets. Linux, on the other hand, supports all the languages regardless of where you bought or obtained your copy of Linux.”
I don’t think you understand how multi-language codepages actually work under Win 2000/XP. I can’t imagine Linux being anywhere near as powerful as Windows in multi-language support – in Windows you can set separate language codepages for the keyboard and OS environment (menu labelling, etc.) independently if you want to, while apps are still able to use whatever language they have been set to (say, Arabic keyboard typing Arabic text, French OS environment and MS Word running in German language mode). Don’t laugh, I have seen this done as a practical joke. Also, you can add as many language codepages as you want to from the Windows installer CD at any time – of the 40+ languages that Windows supports (IIRC) – even though it defaults to its normal regional setting under normal circumstances, it is by no means stuck there. All of the supported codepages are either included on the install CD or are downloadable from MSFT as new ones are added.
I think it is well known that Windows supports multiple languange font display simultaneously better than any *nix does (or probably ever will). Also, in Windows I can use any language I want to in filenames (as long as I have the codepages for them installed) – for instance, normally filenames are in English (in my case) but I can also save files with names that are in Korean or Russian fonts because the entire Windows OS is unicode based (in fact, there are a couple of cases where I have done exactly this). This introduces the disturbing fact that I cannot now reference those files by filename anymore because my keyboard is set to English all the time (unless I cut and paste the filename or something).
“I don’t run Windows, but if Netscape is using the Microsoft IME, that is because it is the only way on non-Asian language versions of Windows to enter Asian text (well, you could buy an add-on product like Twin-Bridge or something, but you can’t simply install a 3rd Party IME such as ATOK on an English version of Windows and have it work). You can enter Asian text on Linux without jumping through these hoops. ”
Global IME is COM/Unicode based, and third party IME developers rarely offer product that’s not codepage based, since their customers are mostly in China/Taiwan, Korean, Japan – there is little incentive for an IME developer to offer their products outside the targeted market.
If you think linux offer better CJK support, I would like to know how I can have a MP3 player that will properly display MP3 files with Chinese GB2312, Chinese BIG5, Korean, and Japanese ID v2 tags in one play list, how I can burn a CD with above mentioned CJK languages as directory and/or file names. All these requires Unicode support at both the OS and application level – although linux kernel and glibc offer UTF8 support, few apps are ready for that.
Since win2k, mixed language directory/filenames can be used and properly displayed on FAT32 and NTFS partitions, and XP’s CD burning utility is the only tool on the market, well as far as I knew, to burn a CD with mixed languages capability and window media player 8 offer the ability to display mixed language tags for MP3 playlist – even if an application, like photoshop, is not ready to use Unicode file name, one can still use the 8.3 directory/filename alias as a workaround.
It’s M$’ Unicode push that almost forced Samba to deal with Unicode in 3.0.
As far as I can tell, X/Xft/FreeType still doesn’t offer font linking to combine multiple font files together to offer a complete Unicode charset – without that mixed language programming is much more difficult and the result usually doesn’t looks good.
Gil Bates:
I don’t think you understand how multi-language codepages actually work under Win 2000/XP.
Actually I do. It is what I do for a living.
I can’t imagine Linux being anywhere near as powerful as Windows in multi-language support
I don’t need to imagine. I use both and know what they are capable of. As I said before, I can support Japanese, for example, under Linux both at the input and display level. This is impossible to do under any version of Windows without either a 3rd Party application or the Multilingual Packs, which are only available for Windows XP. Even with those, things are often not displayed correctly.
in Windows you can set separate language codepages for the keyboard and OS environment (menu labelling, etc.)
And have you ever actually tried that using an Asian language display on an English version of Windows? It sucks! In Japanese (the only Asian language I am fluent in) the text is often times illegible. The only way for Japanese to be truly usable on a Windows machine is to install the native Japanese version of Windows.
independently if you want to, while apps are still able to use whatever language they have been set to (say, Arabic keyboard typing Arabic text, French OS environment and MS Word running in German language mode).
Running in German mode on an English, Spanish, French, other Western European languages, machine is NO BIG DEAL since all of them use the SAME 1252 WINDOWS CODEPAGE.
Also, using an Arabic keyboard to enter text from these languages is no big feat since all codepages support the standard ASCII and Extended ASCII characters. In fact, it is for precisely this reason that Arabic is referred to as a Bi-Di language. Arabic is written right to left, and English and European languages are written left to right in the same sentence.
Don’t laugh, I have seen this done as a practical joke.
And in my line of work, I have seen cases where it is absolutely necessary.
Also, you can add as many language codepages as you want to from the Windows installer CD at any time – of the 40+ languages that Windows supports (IIRC) – even though it defaults to its normal regional setting under normal circumstances, it is by no means stuck there. All of the supported codepages are either included on the install CD or are downloadable from MSFT as new ones are added.
You can add codepages to Linux as well. The difference between the two is that I can buy Red Hat Linux, for example, and install whatever language I want to. Under Windows, I can only install English with somewhat crappy support for Asian languages. If Microsoft would sell a version of Windows that let the user decide at run time which language they wanted to use, and then fully supported that language, be it Asian or otherwise, then that would be fine. Instead, they strip out full Asian language support in their US, Canadian and European versions of Windows because they want to rape countries like Japan on the price (its the same reasoning behind DVD Region codes). Well, that and Windows would probably require more than one CD to install if they offered this level of international support.
Sure, the underlying ideas behind Windows internationalization may be cool, but the implementation is crippled, and that is the whole point I was trying to make.
I think it is well known that Windows supports multiple languange font display simultaneously better than any *nix does (or probably ever will).
Huh? Unicode, which is supported under Linux, lets you display any Unicode character (including Asian languages). The Asian codepages, on the other hand, support English and European characters in the first 256 cope points, just like every other codepage does. Windows may have prettier Anti-aliased fonts, but to say that Windows displays mixed language text better than Linux is incorrect.
Also, in Windows I can use any language I want to in filenames (as long as I have the codepages for them installed) – for instance, normally filenames are in English (in my case) but I can also save files with names that are in Korean or Russian fonts because the entire Windows OS is unicode based (in fact, there are a couple of cases where I have done exactly this).
You can do this under Linux as well. Also, you don’t seem to understand the workings of codepages vs. Unicode, and you can save files in Asian characters without using Unicode on both Windows and Linux.
tty:
Global IME is COM/Unicode based, and third party IME developers rarely offer product that’s not codepage based,
There most certainly are Unicode enabled 3rd Party IME’s available. What is NOT available is an abundance of quality Unicode fonts, so we have to use the codepage based ones. Unicode fonts are too expensive to make because of the Asian languages.
For example, in the US, I can go down to Software and Junk and pick up five million fonts for $19.99. In Japan, it costs me around $100.00 to pick up twenty fonts, and usually, there are four or five different fonts and everything else is just a slight variation on those.
since their customers are mostly in China/Taiwan, Korean, Japan – there is little incentive for an IME developer to offer their products outside the targeted market.
But there is a market. If there wasn’t, do you think Microsoft would have created this cross language IME? No. Besides, whether a market exists or not is irrelevant. The fact is that there are other IMEs available that do work fine in the native Asian language versions of Windows, but that do NOT work on the English version. Linux is more open than this.
If you think linux offer better CJK support, I would like to know how I can have a MP3 player that will properly display MP3 files with Chinese GB2312, Chinese BIG5, Korean, and Japanese ID v2 tags in one play list,
Install XMMS with internationalization support. All you have to do is actually install Linux and you can see that it works. I suggest you try Red Hat or SuSE since the internation stuff is mostly set up for you.
I have a huge collection of Japanese ogg files (made from my own legally owned Japanese half-sized single CDs of course). Every one that contains Japanese text is displayed correctly under Linux.
how I can burn a CD with above mentioned CJK languages as directory and/or file names. All these requires Unicode support at both the OS and application level – although linux kernel and glibc offer UTF8 support, few apps are ready for that.
Regardless, there are apps that can handle it. You are talking like the GlobalIME on Windows is a fix for all of these issues. It isn’t. As I said before, if an app doesn’t support Unicode or double-byte codepages such as Shift-JIS or EUC, then there is NO way you are going to get support for Asian languages in that product. We are talking about Windows and Linux, not the apps that run on them. Please don’t use faulty Linux apps to show that Linux doesn’t have good i18n support, because I can show you the same problems with faulty Windows apps.
Since win2k, mixed language directory/filenames can be used and properly displayed on FAT32 and NTFS partitions, and XP’s CD burning utility is the only tool on the market, well as far as I knew, to burn a CD with mixed languages capability and window media player 8 offer the ability to display mixed language tags for MP3 playlist –
Your lack of experience and product knowledge should in no way be the deciding factor on which OS supports i18n better. By the way, the latest version of WinAmp will also display Asian language text (it is listed as experimental in the installer though).
even if an application, like photoshop, is not ready to use Unicode file name, one can still use the 8.3 directory/filename alias as a workaround.
I’m glad you brough Photoshop up. See, if I install an English version of Photoshop on a native Japanese version of Windows XP, then I can type Japanese characters and have them display correctly in my graphic. However, if I try to do the same on an English version of XP (even if I have all the multilingual support for Japanese from the MSDN library installed) It will not display correctly. Under Linux, I don’t have to worry about Japanese versions of Linux vs. English versions of Linux. It just works if Asian languages are supported by the application.
It’s M$’ Unicode push that almost forced Samba to deal with Unicode in 3.0.
I’m happy to say that I was at one point a part of that Unicode push at Microsoft. Then, I moved on to other companies to do the same thing. Of course, Unicode has problems of its own in regards to Asian languages, but I have already discussed that before and I have already written more than I wanted to.
As far as I can tell, X/Xft/FreeType still doesn’t offer font linking to combine multiple font files together to offer a complete Unicode charset – without that mixed language programming is much more difficult and the result usually doesn’t looks good.
No offense, but you don’t have any idea what you are talking about. Under Unicode, if a font exists to display any given character, then that character will be displayed. If the font doesn’t exist, then you will see a bunch of question marks.
Here text from a document that I created on my Linux machine and SCP’d over to this machine. As you can see, it has Arabic, Japanese and Korean all displayed correctly at the same time (the Japanese makes sense. I can’t make any promises regarding the other two). Please note that each one is using a different font (now we’ll see if they get munged as I post them on OSNews).
إضافي إلى الخليج استعدادا للهجوم
これは日本語ですӍ 0;
오디오뉴스|기사제ǣ 72;
Anyway, the bottom line is that Windows does have some very good i18n support, .NET being the pinnacle of it from a development standpoint. The one place that Windows really falls down flat, and where Linux shines, is the level of Asian language support offered to non-Asian users. This is the area where Linux is more free. I can have a fully supported Japanese Linux machine without having to either fly to Japan and buy it, or pay huge prices for it through Japanese import stores; which are the only choices I have with Windows (or I can buy a copy of MSDN’s Universal Subscription – which is even more pricey).
That is precicely what I figured would happen to the Japanese, Korean, and Arabic text.
OK, can’t argue with all that but I still have a question.
How well does any Linux word processing application handle mixtures of different languanges (including Bi-Di and non-Bi-Di) within the same document compared to MS Word? How well multi-language support is handled within a single document is probably by far the most important area of interest for most users and I think that something like Abi Word or Open Office probably does not have anywhere near the same level of cross-language support as MS Word, which is a global standard.
“And have you ever actually tried that using an Asian language display on an English version of Windows? It sucks! In Japanese (the only Asian language I am fluent in) the text is often times illegible. The only way for Japanese to be truly usable on a Windows machine is to install the native Japanese version of Windows.”
What is different about the “Japanese version” of Windows that makes it able to display Japanese characters properly while English Windows cannot? I don’t understand, if you’ve got the same Japanese codepage and you’ve got a decent Japanese font in both cases, what other difference is there? Are you saying that the English version just doesn’t come with a good enough Japanese font even though it has exactly the same Japanese codepage loaded?
This doesn’t seem like a very big deal to me at all – just a matter of tracking down the same “better” Japanese font and installing it if you are using English version of Windows and then you’ve got exactly the same configuration – a very far cry from having to “install the native Japanese version of Windows.”
Overview of Windows XP International Support
http://www.microsoft.com/globaldev/articles/winxpintl.asp
RE: Localized versus Non-localized versions of XP…
“Multilingual User Interface (MUI):
Windows XP with MUI Pack is closer to the localized experience than ever before.
Improved coverage: Localization of the UI is boosted to 97% in Windows XP Multilingual User Interface Pack (versus 100% for a typical localized version). Most of these improvements can be attributed to changes made in the system’s Shell and to the elimination of string resources from the Registry. Folder names, shortcuts, friendly doc names, control panel, and desktop elements are now fully localized.”
Doesn’t seem like the localized version of XP for Japan is very much different from what you get in the MUI add-on (or CD language packs), does it?
RE: Supporting any available language in the UI “without rebooting”…
“The Windows 2000 MultiLanguage Version (MUI) allows users – for the first time – to select the language of the User Interface (dialog boxes, menus, HTML help files etc). This version of Windows allows users to:
– switch the language of the UI without rebooting
– set the UI language per user
– add/remove language resource modules”
…
Windows XP and 2000 MUI
http://www.microsoft.com/globaldev/FAQs/Multilang.asp
Does Windows MUI (set to a particular user interface language) differ from a localized version?
Because the resources used in a localized version are used to create MUI [or CD language packs], there is no difference between the actual translations. This results in a nearly full localization, apart from small elements that are still dependent on:
– INF files
– UI strings stored in the registry
– ANSI components such as Hyperterminal
– 16-bit applications in ANSI format.
The percentage of localization coverage in Windows 2000 with MUI is about 90%. In Windows 2000 with MUI, there are many visible strings that appear in English. One of the most noticeable areas is the Start Menu. This is because the Start Menu is populated directly using the file names of folders and link files created at setup time. They appear in English even if you are running on a MUI system with Japanese User Interface, as English was the original installation language.
This has been changed in Windows XP and results in a much higher localized experience for the system user [97% according to other document]. Much of the additional localized coverage in Windows XP is achieved through “MUI-enabling” Windows XP system modules and applications…
Windows XP’s language packs included on the installer CD use the same code as the MUI add-on described above, so I can’t imagine what you could be talking about other than a missing font when you say that ‘English Windows sucks for displaying Japanese compared to the fully localized version sold in Japan’. Please explain.
Windows XP’s language packs included on the installer CD use the same code as the MUI add-on described above, so I can’t imagine what you could be talking about other than a missing font when you say that ‘English Windows sucks for displaying Japanese compared to the fully localized version sold in Japan’. Please explain.
Fonts are not the problem. In fact, you can buy true type fonts from Japan (since the Mincho and Gothic ones that come with Windows are somewhat boring) and use them just fine on an English version of Windows or on Linux for that matter. The problem is with the OS itself. At the base level, the English version of Windows does not have all the support for double-byte character data. The English version of Windows doesn’t deal well with Japanese characters yet (although I imagine within the next few releases it may).
It really isn’t about codepages and fonts per se, but rather the physical handling of double-byte character data. The English product just doesn’t do it right some times.
The Windows XP MUI add-on is far better than Microsoft has ever released, however, it is still not quite equal to the native Japanese version of Windows. For example, if you install the Japanese MUI on an English XP machine, then you can set the UI language on a per user basis. This means that I could log into Windows and get an English interface, and my friend Takashi could log in and get a Japanese UI. This works fine with Microsoft products (just like the GlobalIME works fine within Microsoft products), however, since at the base level it is still an English machine, you will have problems like the one with Photoshop that I mentioned before (on a native Japanese machine, I can enter Japanese text successfully, but on an English based machine, the characters don’t show up).
There are some other problems with the XP MUI add-on too. One example is with Netscape or Mozilla (although it happens on many other programs as well). If you have a machine set up with two users, both of which use a different language UI, then what often times happens is the non-Microsoft programs will only show one setting; meaning that both users will either see Japanese or English. Of course, on a Japanese XP system, if you install an English product, all custom controls will display English and all Common controls will display Japanese. That’s just the nature of Windows.
You have some good information and I’m glad to see that you are actually willing to research this. Thanks.
I don’t mean to infer that Windows is not good at internationalization, because they are. In fact, they have really made a ton of progress with .NET, so I hope the more they use .NET in their software development, the better i18n support will be. I also don’t mean to infer that Linux doesn’t have i18n flaws, because it does.
The reason I’m pointing out the flaws with Windows and pointing out the good parts of Linux’s i18n support is because of tty’s post. He/she claimed that Linux had lousy i18n support and that Windows was perfect; almost to the level of demanding faithful worship. The truth is actually that they both do a good job of global support and yet they both still have flaws.
Having said all that, the main point I was trying to make to tty was this: From the end user standpoint, a Linux end user can get the full Asian support that Linux has to offer by going down to their local Software and Other Stuff store and buying Red Hat, Caldera, SuSE, etc; or you can install Debian and set up i18n support manually. On the other hand, to get the full Asian language support Windows has to offer, you have to buy the specific Asian language version of Windows that you want to use; and this version is NOT for sale outside of that specific Asian country. Therefore, in this respect, Linux is better in my opinion.
“As far as I can tell, X/Xft/FreeType still doesn’t offer font linking to combine multiple font files together to offer a complete Unicode charset – without that mixed language programming is much more difficult and the result usually doesn’t looks good.
No offense, but you don’t have any idea what you are talking about. Under Unicode, if a font exists to display any given character, then that character will be displayed. If the font doesn’t exist, then you will see a bunch of question marks. ”
Iconoclast, take a look at this page might help you understand what I am talking about, it’s about MLang font link interfaces
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/workshop/misc/ml…
With Mlang/Font linking, if a particular unicode glyph is missing in one particular font, the system could find that missing glyph from ANOTHER font that does have it and create a custom combined font on the fly to correclty display the whole unicode text, without the ??? mark.
There are only handful of “full” Unicode TTF fonts – Arial Unicode, BitStream CyberBit, and a few others I can’t remember at this time. The problem is most TTFs on the Windows platform nowadays have unicode tables, but rarely do they contain CJK glyphs and I am sure you know the like of SimSun (GB2312), MingLiu (BIG5) and MS Gothic (Japanese) fonts don’t contain full CJK glyphs either. If I have a sentence that contains, say, some Chinese characters, some Japanese characters and western characters as well, how do I draw this, as a software guy, to the screen ? Without fontlinking, I will have to draw Japanese with the Gothic font, Chinese with SimSun font and ascii/western language using, say, Arial font for best user experience – Unified CKJ doesn’t fly and you probably know western language/ascii glyphs in CJK fonts simply don’t look very well, especially when you try to turn on Anti-Alias; However with fontlinking, I can create a custom font on the fly to ensure those ??? marks won’t appear in a much easier way.
I know XMMS can do Japanese, but you probably didn’t understand my previous question – say in XMMS you got two MP3 files, first with Japanese ID3 v2 tags and the second one with Chinese ID3 v2 tags, are you sure XMMS can display them correctly ? what codepage you would set XMMS to ? If UTF8, what font you are using for XMMS ? I am talking about mixed languages display, not using one particular CJK language.
If you think you got considerable Unicode experties under your belt, my hat off for your effort to make Unicode a reality; However, you should also realize you are talking to one of the pickiest i18N user who happen to make a living writing CJK related software with enough hair-pulling days to deal with the like of mixed languages issues found in real world situations – like how to display codepage 437 (IBM line drawing characters) and DBCS lead bytes mixed together, how to use Unicode on win9x without MSLU and how to draw CJK characters on western language windows with neither a CJK true type font nor a TwinBridge add-on and from win3.1 to NT4.
Your photoshop on English Windows can’t deal with Japanese Unicode IME question is pretty simple
1 Photoshop, not a unicode ready app, on English Windows is not prepared for DBCS characters when system locale is set to none DBCS locale – at least M$ doesn’t think it is.
2 Unicode IME can’t determine which codepage to use for Unicode/Ansi translation of WM_IME_CHAR message – system locale ? then you got ??? marks, thread locale ? Photoshop probably didn’t handle the WM_INPUTLANGUAGE related messages and M$ didn’t provide a per application mechanism to set locale on the fly as far as IME/TextOut is concerned.
3 English photoshop will work under japanese Windows because on DBCS enabled Windows, there is an internal support – Windows Intelligent Font manager (Wifeman, I think) that will intercept any characters with 8th bit set to detect if it is a DBCS sequence, so Japanese text will be displayed properly – this can’t be done on western language Windows as that will result in garbage on many characters with 8th bit set (IBM line drawing symbols, etc).
If Adobe want to make photoshop “world ready”, it actually don’t have to convert the whole code base to Unicode, just at selected entries would be enough.
1 At WinMain time, prepare to grabe Unicode command line or process lpszCommandline in different codepage than the system default.
2 Draw text using Unicode with the like of ExtTextOutW() that’s available since win95 or better with Mlang/Uniscript.
3 Deal with file names in Unicode or in a codepage other than the system default.
4 Prepare to deal with WM_IME_XX message in Unicode and on win9x, enable GlobalIME if conditions are right.
As far as I know, M$ didn’t understand or was not interested in this mixed language things until IE3 as it rejected some related technology offering from Asia before that for whatever reasons and later on, went back and jointly developed related products for Windows and IE – I don’t know the details as I heard it second hand, but I do know that some CJK fonts were done in Asia using cheap labors (sort of barely 18, after all CJK fonts are mostly monospaced, so there are little kerning pairs involved) and some IMEs are using dictionaries collected/developed in that area – sentence based IME need very good dictionary, M$’ 10MB to 20 MB entries are considered low quality, top players often offer 100MB+ ones – how big is linux’s IME dictionary ?
Personally, I wouldn’t claim I am a linux geek, but I noticed linux around kernel 0.9x and began to play with it around kernel 1.2/1.3 change over. When I, as a user, take a look at a platform’s i18N support, I will just open a few CJK web sites and from the quality of font rendering, the title bar, I will know how much attention has been put behind the i18N effort – browsers are almost always the best in this area.
Iconoclast, I think your point is based on the fact that on Linux, you can set language ID on a per appication basis and the OS, system RTL are UTF8 ready so you don’t need the like of TwinBridge add-on to use CJK features – I have no argument on this front. However, as a CJK user, I focused on if I can get a set of quality applications that I can use on a daily basis with nice looking font rendering and support for mixed language CJK situations and my list is quite short on WinXP:
1 Simple Editors/Word Processor
Notepad, WordPad, OfficeXP – depends on Windows Edit Control and Rich Edit Control – they are Unicode based, work with Unicode IME, support MLang/Fontlinking.
2 File Manger/File Browser
Windows Explorer/Old NT4 File Manager (Winfile.exe)
Unicode based, depend on Edit Control, Common Control
Common Control is one of the first in using MLang, I guess.
(Check CC_GET/SETUNICODEFORMAT, even works on win9x)
3 Web Browser
IE6 – Mlang/Global IME’s birth place.
4 IM
Windows Messenger – depends on Common Control/RichEdit control – I type in GB2312, my friend in BIG5 then we still see Chinese correctly, although in computer terms, the two encoding formats are as close as Japan and US in geographic term.
5 Fax
XP’s built-in fax serverice – Mlang capable.
6 Media Player
Windows MediaPlayer – Mlang capable, will show and can edit Unicode ID3 v2 tag.
7 CD burning
XP’s built-in applet, will do Mlang based file/directory names.
8 E-mail
Outlook Express – better than Outlook in terms of Mlang.
9 SSH to *nix
My pet project – will do Mlang, Global/Unicode IME, Unicode from win95 to winxp and probably one of the biggest reason I care all about these details.
The reason is pretty simple – CJK localized windows enlarge font metrics by about 25%, so their 12 point font is actually about 16 point on western lang. Windows.
Also CJK TTF fonts often contain embedded bitmap fonts for a few frequently used point sizes, 16×16 pixel is one of them.
Before WinXP, western lang version of the Windows wouldn’t do the enlargement for CJK fonts, so you ended up seeing a screen font from TTF formular at an odd size. If you try to enlarge the font size in IE, the result will be better.
IE’s first CJK language packs have no embedded bitmap in their TTF fonts, so for a same CJK font name, later versions often have a larger file size.
“Huh? Unicode, which is supported under Linux, lets you display any Unicode character (including Asian languages). ”
NT is native Unicode – although it took M$ 10 years to get it right. NT still doesn’t do per app based codepage switching, but the reason behind it may not be pure technical:
1 M$ may want a marketing advantage – win2k/xp’s Unicode based IME and TSF break a lot of ANSI/codepage based apps.
2 If the app isn’t DBCS/Bi-Di aware, there is some good reasons to not do it – what if an app breaks a line in between a DBCS pair ? what if an app generate a DBCS file name that is not compatible with the codepage for the file system – garbaged filename that users have a hard time to understand and delete/rename.
“Anyway, the bottom line is that Windows does have some very good i18n support, .NET being the pinnacle of it from a development standpoint. The one place that Windows really falls down flat, and where Linux shines, is the level of Asian language support offered to non-Asian users. This is the area where Linux is more free. I can have a fully supported Japanese Linux machine without having to either fly to Japan and buy it, or pay huge prices for it through Japanese import stores; which are the only choices I have with Windows (or I can buy a copy of MSDN’s Universal Subscription – which is even more pricey).”
You goto control panel of win2k/xp and set the system default locale to whatever you see fit, say Japanese, and after a reboot, you get almost all the features a Japanese localized windows will offer less the menu/dialog strings.
For the menu/dialog UI string, there is MUI, but I am not sure they still stick to the large corp. only policy.
Your Windows i18N kownledge is for the “last centry”‘s situation. Even then, you don’t need MSDN universal for Japanese Windows, the professional one will do – at least that was we did in “last centry” 😎
Iconoclast is focused more on the two users on one PC situation, a English speaking user want a pure English UI and another Japanese user want a pure Japanese UI.
It’s the skin that matters.
My starting point is on one PC, multiple CJK languages working at the same time. One app. contains 1) info from Japan in Japanese, 2) reports from Korea in Korean – they should displayed properly regardless of the OS’s language settings – It’s the content that matters.
Depends on situations, these two might have different priority. My past expereince was mostly in dealing with the kind of Asian users that actually prefer the English version fo the Windows plus an add-on like TwinBridge, RichWin, MagicWin, etc. than a localized CJK Windows, often because they thought the add-on had offered enhanced features in areas like IME, default codepage switching, and automatic UI translation. So UI to me is less of an issue. However, when add-on product did a system wide hook on Windows for the like of UI translation, DBCS handling, it often screwed up app content as a by product/collateral damage. Part of my job often involved in minimizing/eliminating this sort of damage using various measures – going Unicode, drawing characters in a special way to bypassing hooks and even to the point to roll up special text drawing functions that won’t be hooked on a system wide basis.
“…However, as a CJK user, I focused on if I can get a set of quality applications that I can use on a daily basis with nice looking font rendering and support for mixed language CJK situations and my list is quite short on WinXP…”
That being said, what kind of apps are available that provide this experience on the Linux desktop? Do GNOME, KDE, Abi Word, Open Office, Hancom Office, etc. offer this support as well as all these Windows apps do? I am not asking for specific hyperlinks as proof, just your opinion – the whole point of how well Linux does i18N is somewhat moot if all of the desktop environments and best available apps only support it in a shoddy way compared to what you can get on Windows.
“That being said, what kind of apps are available that provide this experience on the Linux desktop? Do GNOME, KDE, Abi Word, Open Office, Hancom Office, etc. offer this support as well as all these Windows apps do? I am not asking for specific hyperlinks as proof, just your opinion …”
As a software guy, I would say Linux has the potential – UTF8 is there, RH8 even set UTF8 as default on my installation; CJK fonts are there with TTF/TTC support, client side font rendering and CNN/KNN/WNN for xim/IME – these are enough for enabling a single CJK language in an application. However, if the like for font linking, word/sentence breaking can be offered on the system level, i18N programming could be a lot easier without every application doing essentially the same thing at the app level.
From a user’s point of view, I guess CJK font rendering still has room to improve; the printing system (ghostview) should probably offer more postscript optimization, although I haven’t tried printing CJK myself, however, I do noticed that a 40 to 60 K G3 fax page often results in a 800K to 1200K postscript file – if I have a slow Parallel port that can only offer 10KB/s throughput, I would have to wait at least 1 to 2 minutes before I can see a hard copy on a postscript printer.
Strictly speaking, these probably have little to do with Linux the kernel, however, with most distros, KDE/Gnome, StarOffice, ghostscript, etc. are all part of the Linux experience.
Another area is the Wine, one of my app works under Wine smoothly, however the CJK part is useless as Wine claims the DBCS subsystem is not fully supported.
Iconoclast, take a look at this page might help you understand what I am talking about, it’s about MLang font link interfaces
I know what the IMLangFontLink API does, however, Windows does not have an exclusive market on this “technology”. Sun has produced a very good Unix and Solaris i18n book that you should probably read.
There are only handful of “full” Unicode TTF fonts
I know. I said that before. They are very rare because they are so costly to produce.
The problem is most TTFs on the Windows platform nowadays have unicode tables, but rarely do they contain CJK glyphs and I am sure you know the like of SimSun (GB2312), MingLiu (BIG5) and MS Gothic (Japanese) fonts don’t contain full CJK glyphs either.
They don’t contain full CJK (Chinese, Japanese, and Korean) or V (Vietnamese) glyphs for two reasons. First, they don’t have to because they are language specific codepage based fonts; not Unicode fonts. Second, font sets are created around the codepages in use. Shift-JIS, for example, does not support all of the characters that are available in Japanese. The same is true to an even greater extent in Chinese font sets. This has nothing to do with Windows or Linux. They are both in the same boat on this front.
If I have a sentence that contains, say, some Chinese characters, some Japanese characters and western characters as well, how do I draw this
All the API that you are talking about does is pull glyphs from different font sets. As I said before, this is not exclusive to Microsoft.
I know XMMS can do Japanese, but you probably didn’t understand my previous question
I understood it and yes, it works.
If you think you got considerable Unicode experties under your belt…
Well, not only do I write i18n-ized code, I train developers such as yourself to write i18n-ized code on a variety of platforms (Windows, Linux, Solaris, MacOS, OS X, BSD, etc.). I have also written and produced seminars on the subject. Now that we’ve both peed as far as we can, let’s get back to the discussion at hand.
Your photoshop on English Windows can’t deal with Japanese Unicode IME question is pretty simple
It wasn’t a question. I know why it happens, but that doesn’t help users who want to create Japanese graphics on the only version of Windows they can buy in America; the English one. The point is that it does happen and it is one of the reasons that Windows is not as globally friendly to it’s end users as OSes like Linux, MacOS, and OS X are.
Personally, I wouldn’t claim I am a linux geek, but I noticed linux around kernel 0.9x and began to play with it around kernel 1.2/1.3 change over.
If you haven’t looked at Linux’s i18n capabilities since that long ago, why are you arguing with me?
Iconoclast, I think your point is based on the fact that on Linux…
No, my point is that out of the box, of the three OSes I commonly use (Linux, OS X and Windows), the end user has the most crippled Asian support under Windows. Yes, Windows does many things well, but there is still a difference between the Japanese native version of Windows and the English “globalized” version of Windows, which does not exist under Linux. To be honest, the best internationalized platform that I have ever developed for is Java. .NET looks to be very promising, so I hope MS doesn’t blow it.
NEXT POST Ugly Japanese fonts on western lang Windows
You are correct, Windows XP is much better at displaying Asian UIs than prior versions of Windows. Current versions of Red Hat and SuSE are also much better at displaying Asian text in their UIs too.
I think you have misunderstood my posts. I am not asking questions or seeking engineering enlightenment. I already know what I’m doing. I am simply stating the problems that Windows has with Asian support since you suggested Windows was superior to other platforms. I’m simply showing that they are all about the same, only in the case of Windows, you need to pay a premium to get FULL Asian support since it doesn’t come with your English version.
You goto control panel of win2k/xp and set the system default locale to whatever you see fit, say Japanese, and after a reboot, you get almost all the features a Japanese localized windows will offer less the menu/dialog strings.
For the menu/dialog UI string, there is MUI, but I am not sure they still stick to the large corp. only policy.
The key word here is MOST; not all. Actually, without the MUI add-on, you can set your system locale, even in XP, to Japanese until you’re blue in the index finger and it won’t do you much good. Unfortunately, most end users will never have access to the MUI.
Your Windows i18N kownledge is for the “last centry”‘s situation. Even then, you don’t need MSDN universal for Japanese Windows, the professional one will do – at least that was we did in “last centry”
So rather you mean my MSDN subscription titles are last century; not my Windows i18n knowledge. Those are two entirely different things.
Either way, what end user is going to fork over $2,000.00 just to get a Japanese copy of Windows in MSDN when they can fly to Japan and buy it there for around a thousand? I really am wondering how any of this refutes what I have been saying.
Iconoclast is focused more on the two users on one PC situation,
No I’m not. If anything my point of focus has been that regardless of what you do to it, the English version of Windows is crippled when compared to the Japanese version (or any other Asian language version for that matter. I happen to like Japanese because I can speak and read it).
Tde two users on one PC scenario was one of many I brought up to show that Windows is still not supreme in the i18n arena; although they are getting better. I also pointed out that Linux doesn’t suffer from this market specific weakness.
“I know what the IMLangFontLink API does, however, Windows does not have an exclusive market on this “technology”. Sun has produced a very good Unix and Solaris i18n book that you should probably read.”
Yeah, if I get a chance. However in real world, Solaris’ print filter will core dump if some EUDC characters reach the print queue – their technology superiority don’t always help end users – M$’s technology might not be the best, but their products let more ordinary users enjoy some of the wonders at an affordable price.
“There are only handful of “full” Unicode TTF fonts
I know. I said that before. They are very rare because they are so costly to produce. ”
And probably not that easy to carry around either, even if the cost isn’t an issue.
“Well, not only do I write i18n-ized code, I train developers such as yourself to write i18n-ized code on a variety of platforms (Windows, Linux, Solaris, MacOS, OS X, BSD, etc.). ”
Hehe, definitely not included me, I know how I learnt my little bag of tricks; However, I am always interested in anything on the subject – my email is [email protected]
“Your photoshop on English Windows ……..
It wasn’t a question. I know why it happens, but that doesn’t help users who want to create Japanese graphics on the only version of Windows they can buy in America; the English one. The point is that it does happen and it is one of the reasons that Windows is not as globally friendly to it’s end users as OSes like Linux, MacOS, and OS X are ”
I think it is Adobe’s problem – they are not somebody foreign to fonts, and M$ offered Global IME since IE5, a few usable Unicode programming interfaces since win95, a practical Unicode environment since win2k – this is just like you can’t blame Linux with weak i18N support if a particular implementation of vi doesn’t handle DBCS and/or UTF8 correctly under, say Redhat 7.x/8.x. – in my view, it is more like a business decision.
“All the API that you are talking about does is pull glyphs from different font sets. As I said before, this is not exclusive to Microsoft.
I know XMMS can do Japanese, but you probably didn’t understand my previous question
I understood it and yes, it works. ”
OK, do linux/XFree86/Xft/freetype offer something similar to Mlang’s font linking on a major linux distro ? My recent casual search is no. if we assume that font linking is not available yet on linux as a system level API and without a “Full unicode” font, can I use XMMS to display mixed language CJK titles ? i.e. 1st MP3 with Japanese title, 2nd with Korean title, 3rd with GB2312 Chinese title and 4th with BIG5 Chinese title at once – if yes, then, XMMS has application level support for mixed language CJK – Which of the following item your reply of “yes, it works.” refer to
1) System level mixed language CJK support, without “full unicode” font.
2) XMMS’ application level mixed language CJK support, without “full unicode” font.
3) Using a “full Unicode” font on your linux system so any UTF8/Unicode app. can do mixed lagnuage CJK.
“Personally, I wouldn’t claim I am a linux geek, but I noticed linux around kernel 0.9x and began to play with it around kernel 1.2/1.3 change over.
If you haven’t looked at Linux’s i18n capabilities since that long ago, why are you arguing with me? ”
Hehe, in my limited vocabulary “began to play with linux 8/9 years ago” doesn’t necessarily mean “Haven’t looked at Linux’s i18n capabilities” since that long ago. As a user, I am not impressed by Linux’s recent i18N capable application collections, so that’s the reason of my arguments here.
“No, my point is that out of the box, of the three OSes I commonly use (Linux, OS X and Windows), the end user has the most crippled Asian support under Windows. Yes, Windows does many things well, but there is still a difference between the Japanese native version of Windows and the English “globalized” version of Windows, which does not exist under Linux. To be honest, the best internationalized platform that I have ever developed for is Java. .NET looks to be very promising, so I hope MS doesn’t blow it”
Well, out of what you refer to as “crippled” Asian support Windows environment, I found a collection of apps that do mixed language very well – can I under Linux write a CDR with file names in Chinese, Japanese, Korean on the same directory using cdrecorder and have it properly read under Win2k/XP equipped with CJK fonts and related NLS support ? Can I use a production release of 2.x Samba to share a UTF8 mounted ext3 linux partition and save files created on Windows with file names in Chinese, Japanese, Korean ? I know it is a definte NO, since Unicode is not supported in the Samba 2.x series.
Java doesn’t offer anything better than XP in terms of CJK support – my XP’s default locale is English (US) and has FE fonts/NLS libs, how ever, I can’t use XP’s unicode IME to input Chinese to java icq client (???s), although it can display Chinese correctly sent by my friend’s icq running on a Chinese version of winxp – an indication that the OS/JVM interface is codepage based, not Unicode based.
My point of XP vs Linux in terms of CJK support is based on the following:
As a Joe Doe user, I don’t care the underlying technical details, as long as I can’t have a collection of apps I would use on Linux that offer the same level of mixed language CJK capabilities offered by those similar apps on the WinXP, I would say Linux doesn’t have better mixed language CJK support than WinXP, further, if Linux can’t offer better CJK font rendering quality AND faster CJK language printing capability, I would say Linux has an inferior CJK support in general than WinXP. In short, the criteria is 1) App Availablity 2) User Experience.
There may have some “localized” features that not avialable on “globalized” WinXP, but if I don’t use those features, I don’t care.
“So rather you mean my MSDN subscription titles are last century; not my Windows i18n knowledge. Those are two entirely different things”
I mean you focused more on “last centry’s” win9x/NT4’s i18N support weakness. Also in “last centry” the company I once worked for paid $500 to $700/year for MSDN professional to get CJK version of Windows for testing. When the product shipped, we imported CJK Windows by mail, installed systems and then exported those systems to CJK customers.
As far as I know, MSDN Universal has a loooot more than Japaness Windows. If a user really need the authentic Japanese localized Windows, s/he can probably also find a few importers in the US somewhere.
MUI is just the resource/help sh*t and probably has little to do with subject matter i18N capablities.
Actually, on XP there are two levels of system codepage/locale settings:
1 Control Panel one mentioned before and the registry entry
2 HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESYSTEMCurrentControlSetControlNlsLocale(Defaul t)
I think it is Adobe’s problem
To the end user, does it really matter who’s problem it is? The fact is that if Windows had full support for the native languages instead of offering the Global IME, which is a workaround, then Adobe wouldn’t have to worry about it.
OK, do linux/XFree86/Xft/freetype offer something similar to Mlang’s font linking on a major linux distro ? My recent casual search is no.
“Font Linking” is Microsoft’s term. The rest of the world uses the term “Font Switching”; which is probably why you haven’t found much on it in your internet searches. Microsoft’s claim that you “create a new font…” is false since in reality you load multiple fonts and switch between them to display the necessary glyphs. While their implementation may differ, most modern OSes support Font Switching.
Hehe, in my limited vocabulary “began to play with linux 8/9 years ago” doesn’t necessarily mean “Haven’t looked at Linux’s i18n capabilities” since that long ago.
No problem. I probably read it wrong too.
Can I use a production release of 2.x Samba to share a UTF8 mounted ext3 linux partition and save files created on Windows with file names in Chinese, Japanese, Korean ? I know it is a definte NO, since Unicode is not supported in the Samba 2.x series.
Unicode and UTF8 are supported in Samba. You need to use version 2.2. By the way, UTF8 is not Unicode and you cannot interchangibly use the two terms. UTF8 is an 8-bit encoding of Unicode (which is 16-bit) and it works differently.
Java doesn’t offer anything better than XP in terms of CJK support – my XP’s default locale is English (US) and has FE fonts/NLS libs, how ever, I can’t use XP’s unicode IME to input Chinese to java icq client (???s), although it can display Chinese correctly sent by my friend’s icq running on a Chinese version of winxp – an indication that the OS/JVM interface is codepage based, not Unicode based.
Java is Unicode based, not codepage based. Windows is where you are having the codepage problem. You can send Japanese text just fine using a Java ICQ on a native Japanese machine. It is the English machines that have the trouble. You are using this as an example to show a weakness in Java when in reality it just makes the point I have been evangelizing; Windows does NOT provide users with a true Asian experience unless you buy a native Asian language version of Windows. The truth is that Java offers a tremendous amount to both developers and users in regards to internationalization. .NET is the first Microsoft product that shows a similar level of i18n consideration.
My point of XP vs Linux in terms of CJK support is based on the following:
As a Joe Doe user, I don’t care the underlying technical details, as long as I can’t have a collection of apps I would use on Linux that offer the same level of mixed language CJK capabilities offered by those similar apps on the WinXP
You can have a collection of apps that support mixed Asian language support under Linux.
Having said that, let’s logically look at what we are saying.
I’m saying that it is more important to have the exact same international experience on an operating system regardless of where you bought your OS. I am also saying that Linux offers this whereas Windows doesn’t (a fact that you yourself have confirmed several times during this discussion). So what I’m saying is that if I travel to Japan and find a really cool app that it commonly used there, I want to be able to come home and run that same app on my OS here in the US. With Linux I can do that. With Windows, I can’t.
You, on the other hand, are saying that it is more important to be able to display Chinese, Japanese, and Korean text all at the same time in the same application.
My question to you is which one is more essential? I would argue that there are very few people in the world who read Japanese, Chinese, AND Korean (therefore necessitating the need to view all three at the same time in the same app), whereas there are many people in the world who live outside of Asia that would like to run Japanese, Chinese, OR Korean applications. While Linux can accommodate both of these senarios, I feel the first one is far more important. Windows, on the other hand, does not accommodate the first senario very well, which is by far the more important of the two in my opinion.
printing capability, I would say Linux has an inferior CJK support in general than WinXP. In short, the criteria is 1) App Availablity 2) User Experience.
I don’t know what you are doing to your print jobs, but I print Japanese on Linux all the time and it works just fine.
There may have some “localized” features that not avialable on “globalized” WinXP, but if I don’t use those features, I don’t care.
But there are many people who DO want these features (me for one) and they just aren’t there on Windows.
I mean you focused more on “last centry’s” win9x/NT4’s i18N support weakness.
No I didn’t. Every last Windows weakness that I have pointed out is apparent in Windows XP as well as its predecessors. I have also shown where some improvements have been made (specifically in the MUI, which is not available to joe user), but even then English versions of XP cannot provide the full Asian experience that native versions of XP can.
Also in “last centry” the company I once worked for paid $500 to $700/year for MSDN professional to get CJK version of Windows for testing. When the product shipped, we imported CJK Windows by mail, installed systems and then exported those systems to CJK customers.
I’m still not seeing how these solutions are superior to a customer buying an OS at CompUSA and having it support Asian locales. If anything you are just reinforcing my view.
As far as I know, MSDN Universal has a loooot more than Japaness Windows. If a user really need the authentic Japanese localized Windows, s/he can probably also find a few importers in the US somewhere.
I already said that, but then the price of their OS is still much more expensive than the English version of Windows. For example, I lived near Kinokuniya when Windows 98 was released. I could buy a Japanese copy of Windows 98 there for twice the price of an English version. Linux distributions don’t plunder your money from you in this fashion.
MUI is just the resource/help sh*t and probably has little to do with subject matter i18N capablities.
The MUI is what provides you with a decent Asian UI. Without it you get some Asian support, but you don’t get the UI (kind of a moot point since most users don’t have access to the MUI). With Linux, you get the UI; with most of the popular distributions going to the hassle of setting it all up for you.
Actually, on XP there are two levels of system codepage/locale settings:
Neither of which brings you closer to the full Asian language experience you get with a native release. Is this not true?
“You, on the other hand, are saying that it is more important to be able to display Chinese, Japanese, and Korean text all at the same time in the same application.
My question to you is which one is more essential? I would argue that there are very few people in the world who read Japanese, Chinese, AND Korean”
That is true, HOWEVER, in the computing world, there are two faviors of simplified Chinese (GB2312, etc) and traditional Chinese (BIG5 etc). There is a huge population that can read Chinese in both formats and there are quite many in the area that read Chinese/Korean, Chinese/Japanese or Korean/Japanese.
When only one particular CJK language is concerned, the issue has mostly been solved since 97 on the Windows platform by various CJK enablers out their.
“I already said that, but then the price of their OS is still much more expensive than the English version of Windows. For example, I lived near Kinokuniya when Windows 98 was released. I could buy a Japanese copy of Windows 98 there for twice the price of an English version. Linux distributions don’t plunder your money from you in this fashion”
I suppose 1) anything in Japan is likely more expensive than elsewhere in the world – they make more profit in Japan to subsidize their oversea business practice 2) M$ may have a reason for that – fonts, additional testing, IMEs targeting the Japanese market.
” … but even then English versions of XP cannot provide the full Asian experience that native versions of XP can”
Could you shed light on what features you are talking about that is not available in “Globalized” XP, and hight light the reason(s) behind it ? As I see it as a software guy, XP provides the ability to set default system locale and default system codepage to one that belong to CJK, CJK IMEs and Unicode native/DBCS safe file systems on FAT32/NTFS partitions – are you refering to the WIFEMAN like system hook on DBCS localized Windows ? And as a user, I know
1) there are some CJK dictionaries for the like of spell checking are not provided on “globalized” XP, which I think is not that essential
2) probably some handwriting recognition stuff
“I’m still not seeing how these solutions are superior to a customer buying an OS at CompUSA and having it support Asian locales. If anything you are just reinforcing my view”
I was only saying in the US, one can get Japanese Windows through MSDN professional as well which costs far less than $2000 price tag of MSDN Universal you were discussing earlier. If Japanese Windows is retailing for $400, MSDN professional sounds like a good deal, you can install it on 10 PCs right ?
If talking about user experience, for a lot of users in CJK area, PCs are bought first for playing CJK games, anyhing else is secondory in nature – in this regard and for these users, Linux provides no CJK suport at all, since DBCS is not currently supported in Wine.
“printing capability, I would say Linux has an inferior CJK support in general than WinXP. In short, the criteria is 1) App Availablity 2) User Experience.
I don’t know what you are doing to your print jobs, but I print Japanese on Linux all the time and it works just fine.”
Postscript printing using ghostscript is slow in general, worse if bitmap (CJK font rendering) is involved.
“Actually, without the MUI add-on, you can set your system locale, even in XP, to Japanese until you’re blue in the index finger and it won’t do you much good. Unfortunately, most end users will never have access to the MUI.”
“The MUI is what provides you with a decent Asian UI. Without it you get some Asian support, but you don’t get the UI (kind of a moot point since most users don’t have access to the MUI).”
The MUI is not difficult to acquire at all, contrary to your claim. You can get it through OEMs quite easily, in fact…
http://www.microsoft.com/globaldev/FAQs/Multilang.asp#MUIques7
“How can I acquire Windows MUI?
The Windows XP/2000 MUI is sold only through Volume Licensing programs such as the Microsoft Open License Program (MOLP / Open), Select, and Enterprise agreement (or with a new computer as an OEM version at customer request). It is not available through retail channels.”
Here are just two examples (of many) that I came up with in a quick google search. If we wanted to, any of us could use a credit card to buy a copy (3 pack) right now (at dirt cheap pricing)…
http://www.expercom.com/browse_by_category.html?CATEGORY_ID=166&STA…
“OEM 3PK WINDOWS PRO 2000 DSP CD 1-2CPU W/MUI W/SP3 NO RETURN $469.50″
http://www.pcstop.com/product.asp?subcat=1541&mfg=2788
“OEM 3PK WINDOWS PRO 2000 DSP CD 1-2CPU W/MUI W/SP3 NO RETURN $449.95″
The MUI is not difficult to acquire at all, contrary to your claim. You can get it through OEMs quite easily, in fact…
I know. That’s where I got mine. How many joe users know about this though?
“That’s where I got mine. How many joe users know about this though?”
My guess is that few joe users need the CJK features outside the Asia Pacific region.
My guess is that few joe users need the CJK features outside the Asia Pacific region.
I personally know several hundred people who are from Japan who live in my area who would benefit greatly from a real Japanese version of Windows. I also know a handful of Koreans and several people from various Chinese speaking countries (China, Hong Kong, Taiwan and Singapore) who would benefit from it as well. There are quite a few Asians in the US as well as other non-Asian countries.
I have installed SuSE Linux with Japanese UI and support for several Japanese people in my area and they are much happier than they were with English Windows with ersatz Asian support.
When only one particular CJK language is concerned, the issue has mostly been solved since 97 on the Windows platform by various CJK enablers out their.
Actually, the issue was at the same state in 97 as it was in 92, only on a newer version of Windows. Windows 3.1 sucked in Asian languages period so they were forced to come up with their own solutions. At least I know China and Japan did. I didn’t become involved with Korean until 95.
Just curious, do you actually speak, read and use one of these Asian languages?
I suppose 1) anything in Japan is likely more expensive than elsewhere in the world – they make more profit in Japan to subsidize their oversea business practice 2) M$ may have a reason for that – fonts, additional testing, IMEs targeting the Japanese market.
You are right about number 1. All global companies rape Japanese people on prices. Even global companies based in Japan (Sony, Hitachi, JVC, etc.)
Fonts are no excuse for the prices in Japan for two reasons. First, Microsoft has shipped the same two boring fonts (and their equally boring variations) on Japanese versions of Windows since, well, forever. Second, Chinese (both simplified and traditional) use many more glyphs than Japan does, and Korean uses probably an equal number of glyphs, however, Windows is a fraction of the price in those countries (a couple of bucks in China if you buy it off the street
).
<i.Could you shed light on what features you are talking about that is not available in “Globalized” XP[/i]
We’ve already discussed this. But, in a nutshell, I can’t run native Japanese Windows programs that are not available anywhere else on it (for obvious reasons) and I also can’t run English Windows programs on it and input Japanese correctly (with the exception of a few Microsoft apps and perhaps a few others). It is a pathetic experience for Asians that live in America in several areas (although some areas are very nice.)
I’d be interested in why you don’t think it is better to have an OS that supports Asian languages across the board instead of being limited by market strategies, etc.
>>>I’d be interested in why you don’t think it is better to have an OS that supports Asian languages across the board instead of being limited by market strategies, etc.
Because support cost money. If Dell is willing to put up the cash, then all Dell companies will have that. It’s OEM’s decision on whether or not to put extra’s in. CNET has articles on the decision by OEM manufacturers NOT pre-installing Service Patch 1 onto WinXP machines — because OEM’s think that WinXP is stable enough that they can fire a bunch of their telephone support staff so they are not going to risk pre-installing SP1 onto XP machines.
Also there is a lack of CD-ROM space on the XP CD for all the extra’s to be put in (I know that XP comes with CJK fonts in the CD). But we are talking about when XP was a couple months away from shipping and Microsoft was negotiating with AOL on whether to put AOL on the installation CD — CNET reporters talked about the lack of CD-ROM space and AOL were given a space limitation of how many megs of space. Given that SP1, WMP9 and IE6 (SP1) — in some near future, they will run out of space.
[My guess is that few joe users need the CJK features outside the Asia Pacific region.
I personally know several hundred people who are from Japan who live in my area who would benefit greatly from a real Japanese version of Windows. I also know a handful of Koreans and several people from various Chinese speaking countries (China, Hong Kong, Taiwan and Singapore) who would benefit from it as well. There are quite a few Asians in the US as well as other non-Asian countries. ]
Well, I said few, not zero. I am a native Chinese speaker living in a big U.S. city with a very sizable Asian population and would rate my self as quite active on the issue of Asian related computing topics and a frequent contributor in a few ethnic community web forums on the subject.
As far as I can tell, most of my friends originated from China don’t use localized Simplified Chinese Windows, instead they prefer English Windows either with a CJK enabler – top among them were CStar 2.9x and RichWin97 in the win9x era or the built-in support offered by win2k/xp.
Even in China, this English Windows plus add-on approach have been very pupolar. I think there are few reasons why this is happening:
1 Application availability:
Major commercial applications and their update/bug fixes are almost always released in English first. So many users prefer non-localized software for their early availability and higher quality control standard. If these users ever need to use localized resources, i.e. Menus, Dialoges and otehr UI interface, they would patch the binary file to substitute English strings with Chinese equivalents, if a CJK enabler could not do it automatically.
2 Deficiency in localized Windows
For the Simplified Chinese Market, M$ hasn’t offered competent IMEs from Win3.2 up to WinXP. (Win3.2 was M$’ enhanced version of win3.1 targeting Simplified Chinese market) What they offered was enough for causal/occasional Chinese typing – far from adequate for daily business class applications. By using a locally developed Chinese input method called “WuBi”, a trained user can type Chinese as fast as, if not faster than, a western tocuh-typing computer user. So in that market, a CJK enabler is bought mostly for the IME part and the one click switch over feature between GB2312 and BIG5 Chinese encoding. On a non-localized Windows, the switch over feature and automatic UI translation work better and present a less demanding task for those in the CJK enabler business. As those CJK enabler became so famous and popular, major applications developed for that market also get tested heavily under the English Windows plus CJK enabler “platform”.
3 Using CJK localized Windows has its limitation.
The codepage based CJK approach would almost always present a problem when users also want to use IBM extended characters (line drawing characters) or Western European language involving characters with 8th bit set. It is just too hard, if not impossible to use escape sequences or other measure everywhere to avoid this code point collision. A CJK enabler on English Windows offer more freedom to this issue, one can switch off the CJK enabler or add some sort of detection in the CJK enabler to do a better job than a localized Windows.
Overall, at leat in mainland China, localized Windows or not is not a big issue and here in the US or any part of the world where CJK localized Windows are harder to find is even less of an issue – as a potential user already has the ability to read Englsih or the primary language in the region where s/he lives – as long as there is a way to read/input CJK content.
Since win2k, most of my computer savvy friends just set the default codepage/locale to CJK of their choice if they need to use CJK locally developed software on a daily basis. Only a few would hunt for the MUI for a fuller experience – they are, for the most part, a bunch of Unicode strings for M$ Windows or related M$ product anyway, and would offer any real help in CJK functionality.
Localized or non-localized Windows, what really at issue is this – Most applications that require CJK features are developped as codepage based, non-Unicode solutions on the Windows platform. To work properly, this type of CJK applications need codepage based IME and most likely WIFEMAN style system hook to ensure proper DBCS display, which are offered either in a CJK localized Windows or through CJK enablers on non-localized Windows. What Windows really lacked is a per application based facility to fool a CJK application into thinking that it is indeed running on a CJK localized Windows with required CJK/DBCS support. That feature, if offered by M$, would also face some compatibilty issues – when should an application be fooled ? At installation time ? Then the app will be labeled as one CJK language only – say Japanese. However, the appilcation might as well work equally well if it were labeled as Korean, so this is kind of limiting an app’s potential; If an app is fooled at start up time, then there is the risk that the last time this particular app might saved some data in Japanese, and if it were started later as a Korean application, those old data saved in Japanese might become meaningless garbage on the MRU menu, in the Open file dialog etc. I see this happened too many times with those CJK enablers capable of on the fly codepage switching that I actually wrote a small utility to help others rename/delete garbled DBCS file, directory names that are hard to correct through the usual means. So my guess is that M$ decided to not offer this partly because if anything, they are the one to get blamed, if anything on a PC happens out of expectation. Stick Unicode IMEs would also break many applications, but at least M$ can point the finger at others with more confidence – those guys are using old technology, and indeed they are.
Hehe, in China, the MSRP for Windows is 1980 RMB (1 USD = 8.3 RMB), about 240 USD. Yes, one can obtain a lot more than just a Windows on a pirated CD at a street corner, but that is probably another story. (I found one of my freeware program on those CDs a few years ago 8-))) I think if anything a major commercial software house has to do with CJK, the first would be a Japanese localized version, a part from the skewed price structure out there, they obviously want to get their extra investment back.
I certainly like to see better CJK support on any platform, open source or not, but I prefer the Unicode way, not editing font properties in java or netscape. So for the time being, I just stick with XP and a handful of apps that can deal with Unicode correctly, partly beause there are two sort of major Chinese representations in the computer world. Linux is still at an early stage of CJK support – the last time I checked ( a few days back ), Mozilla could not save web pages with Unicode file name, Xft/FreeType can’t handle sbit TTF fonts, requires a few compilations for a few major apps to be useful and even then the speed isn’t anywhere near those Windows equivalents can offer on a lowly platform (Celeron 450 with .NET preview running over a RDP connection).
I am not into fonts game, so I probably can’t comment the font price issue. But I think 100 bucks for 20 fonts isn’t outrageous – I heard in the Type1 era, a good quality Kanji font could run you thousands dollars, and even now Adobe still charge $20 something for the like of 4 Helvetica variants on their web site.
Because support cost money. If Dell is willing to put up the cash, then all Dell companies will have that. It’s OEM’s decision on whether or not to put extra’s in. CNET has articles on the decision by OEM manufacturers NOT pre-installing Service Patch 1 onto WinXP machines — because OEM’s think that WinXP is stable enough that they can fire a bunch of their telephone support staff so they are not going to risk pre-installing SP1 onto XP machines.
I’m not understanding this post. My point was that there isn’t full support for Asian languages in the English version of Windows (or even in the native versions of Windows in some countries according to tty), and you are countering my post by replying that support doesn’t exist because of this, that and the other.
The fact remains that the support isn’t there right? Therefore there is nothing to counter is there?
tty, you make some excellent observations regarding Windows support for Chinese. Of the three (four really) main Asian languages, Japanese has by far the best support natively. Not that I speak Chinese or Korean, but friends from these countries have said basically the same things you have said. Support even in native lanuage versions isn’t all that great.
So in closing, to reiterate what I know through personal experience, Japanese support in the Japanese version of Windows isn’t all that bad, but the psuedo Japanese support found in the US isn’t all that good.
“Not that I speak Chinese or Korean, but friends from these countries have said basically the same things you have said. Support even in native lanuage versions isn’t all that great.”
It is not a CJK/Chinese support issue in the technology front, it is M$ doesn’t offer the best Chinese IME for the simplified Chinese Windows – the technology is there, M$ desn’t want to pay for their inclusion in zh_cn Windows, I think they included a better on in zh_cn Office 2000, but again Office suite is just one of the top contender – not THE top dog in mainland China, as they are using some locally developed word processing apps. This is also true for Anti-Virus software and quite a few popular games.
In fact, I think some linux distros developed in China, Hong Kong have much better CJK support, they even patched XFree86 server for that purpose. I tried one called Bluse Point linux a while ago, with surprising experience. I gave up only because it needs a X server extension that is not available on my Windows machine, or otehr major distros. like Redhat Linux.