Actually, Word2000 and Word2002 support Old Hangul (which I think is
what you refer to as Middle Korean - please correct me if I am wrong).
Word2000 does it using an add-in that uses the Unicode PUA to support
about 5000 Old Hangul pre-composed glyphs.
Word2002 uses the Jamos in U+1100 to compose Old Hangul character
directly (over 1.3 million combinations theoretically, but due to
independent Korean linguists' concerns, only valid combinations are
allowed). You can now create any ancient text in Hangul in Word 2002. AN
inoput method is included in the Korean version, as well as in the
OfficeXP Proofing Tools kit (or Multilanguage pack, which includes the
Proofing Tools kit)
One thing you can not do easily is illustrate partially composed
(invalid) characters for purposes of illustration in a textbook of how
characters are constructed.
I would welcome any details on the below-mentioned limitations of Word
for Korean word processing. It may be that these deficiencies have been
corrected in more recent releases. This opinion of Word compared to HWP
was formed in the early days before Word had a great focus on Asian
languages. Since I was personally involved in that work for the last 6
years, I know how much Word has improved in that area, so I am sure that
at least some of the complaints have been addressed.
Chris Pratley
Group Program Manager
Microsoft Word
Sent with OfficeXP final release
-----Original Message-----
From: Jungshik Shin [mailto:jshin@mailaps.org]
Sent: July 13, 2001 5:39 AM
To: Edward Cherlin
Cc: unicode@unicode.org
Subject: Re: Wordprocessors in Korean
On Thu, 12 Jul 2001, Edward Cherlin wrote:
I've already replied off-line because I thought this is off-topic,
but as you asked (and there are some part related with
Unicode), I'm writing to the list.
> At 06:50 AM 2001-07-10, Genenz wrote:
> >...Now a teacher from Korea told me, MS Word has
> >some shortcomings concerning Korean
> >and there would exist another word-
> >processor much more frequently used than Word2000
> >in his country. (He also complained about win2000 "their
While what he said about shortcomings of MS Word is still the case,
his second point (about the existence of more frequently used word
processor than MS Word in Korea) is not true any more. (see below)
> >are better choices for multilanguage apps and the net",
> >but that is another story not to be discussed here).
>
> Word 2000 on Windows 2000 supports Korean well enough for my needs,
but I
> am not an authority on what Koreans want in a word processor. Can you
get
> an explanation for us of its shortcomings?
For most casual needs, MS Word is sufficient. However, it doesn't
serve well high school Korean teachers, Korean linguists, Korean
historian
and anyone who need to use Middle Korean and incomplete syllables
in modern Korean (i.e. anything that requires U+1100 Hangul Jamos).
Under MS-Windows 3.x, it didn't even support the full repertoire of
11,172 Hangul syllables in modern Korean and that being the case, it
didn't serve casual Korean users well, either (back in MS-Windows 3.x
days)
Middle Korean and incomplete syllables in modern Korean have been
supported by HWP (Hangul Word Processor: aka Arae-Ah Hangul) since 1989
when it was first released for MS-DOS. HWP had its own set of Hangul
I/O APIs (and font format) independent of the underlying OS and these
APIs enabled HWP to run under any language version of MS-DOS/MS-Windows
(when I18N of MS-Windows was primitive or non-existent) and to be
ported
with relative ease to MacOS and Unix/X11. However, they also caused
quite
a lot of trouble in smoothly coexisting with/under MS-Windows (making
MS-Windows, well, even more unstable). In addition to this problem,
several tactical/strategic mistakes by 'Hangul & Computer' (which used
to make HWP) including not realizing the importance of MS-Windows early
enough (similar to what happened to Word Perfect) let competitors (MS
Word, Hunminjongum, etc) catch up with its dominant market position in
Korea. I think a few years ago MS Word finally became the market leader
in Korean word processor market and has held onto it since.
Recently HWP was renamed 'Hangul Wordian' with its internal
encoding being Unicode instead of the proprieatary encoding it used
to use in the past (not that it matters as long as it's kept inside)
and is produced and marketed by Haan Soft (http://www.haansoft.com)
BTW, Microsoft (Korea) made a public annnouncement that it would
support
Middle Korean in the near future (in MS-Windows and MS-Word) and it
would
be great to get that support from one of major OS/word processor
vendors.
Jungshik Shin
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.2 : Fri Jul 13 2001 - 16:24:24 EDT