Re: Mac Questions

From: Deborah Goldsmith (goldsmith@apple.com)
Date: Fri Oct 06 2000 - 15:08:48 EDT


Alan Wood already gave a good answer, so I'll just fill in the details.

on 10/6/00 8:17 AM, Suzanne Topping <stopping@rochester.rr.com> wrote:
> 1) Did Unicode ennoblement replace WorldScript functionality, or is
> WorldScript II still in the picture somehow?

They're independent. WorldScript is still present and required. WorldScript
II was integrated into the system back around OS 8.5; WorldScript I (for
complex one-byte scripts) is still a separate extension.
>
> 2) Does anyone have a source of info. on double-byte handling prior to
> version 7.1?

Prior to 7.1 I believe it was only present in the individual localized
operating systems for the double-byte countries. This was before my time;
Mark Davis could probably comment.
>
> 3) Is there some common industry handling for backward compatibility when
> building Japanese Mac applications now? If there is a need for an
> application to work on post 7.1 systems and 9.0 systems, is there a
> workaround, or are two versions of the application needed?

I don't believe you need to do anything special for a Japanese application
to run on Japanese systems prior to 7.1, beyond what you have to do to get
*any* application to run on such an early system. If you can get it running
on KanjiTalk 7 or earlier, it will probably run on later Japanese OSs and
under the Japanese Language Kit on non-Japanese OSs.

Apple always tells developers to be "good citizens" and not do things that
try to go around the OS. If you want your application to run across such a
broad range of OS versions, that's especially important. It would be a
really good idea to test the application on all the intermediate versions of
the OS.

Most developers these days don't bother going back that far. A lot of
developers today have 8.0 or 8.1 as their minimum system. The only customers
who use older OSs generally are not in the market to buy new applications.

To clarify one thing Alan brought up:
> There are two experimental text editors that use the built-in support of Mac
> OS 9 for Unicode TrueType fonts. I don't know if they require the Language
> Kits (I don't want to uninstall them all to find out).
> MLTE Demo: http://www.merzwaren.com/snippets/index.html#mltedemo
> SUE: http://members.tripod.com/%7Etomaszek/sue.html

Unicode applications on Mac OS do not make use of Language Kit features
except for input methods or keyboards and fonts. For example, you can do
Arabic or Devanagari in a Unicode application without WorldScript I, but you
do need the appropriate fonts and keyboards.

Deborah Goldsmith
Manager, International Toolbox Group
Apple Computer, Inc.
goldsmith@apple.com



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