Jungshik Shin <jshin@mailaps.org> wrote:
>> http://www.unipad.org
>
> On several occasions, I heard about it on this mailing list and finally
>my curiosity drove me to try it. Unfortunately, I was mightly
>disappointed. At first, I was intrigued by their claim that it
>supports Hangul Jamos. I've seen some false claims that Hangul
>Jamos is supported and wanted to see if it really support them. Well,
>it does not do any better than most other fonts/software that made that
>claim. It just treats them as 'spacing characters' instead of combining
>characters. Basically, it's useless except for making Unicode code chart
>(so is Arial MS Unicode.)
Well... :)
1. I confess that it has to be made clearer, what "support" actually
means. We will explain this more precisely. However, displaying Jamo
as separated characters is actually a certain level of support, while
non-support would be to display hollow boxes. Therefore the Jamo
support in UniPad is on a very basic level currently. But at least you
can see something.
2. Please keep in mind that software improves gradually. This is
version 0.99/1.0. Better support of certain scripts will be realised
in future versions. This is planned for Indic scripts and also for
Hangul.
3. If your definition of "support" is that strict, than I doubt that
you will be able to find any software that can claim to support
Unicode at all.
4. You have the chance to evaluate the software, as you did. You are
free to decide not to use UniPad. I feel sorry, if it does not meet
your requirements. But I wouldn't say that it is useless. This depends
on your needs. For example, a hex editor is useless for the purpose of
writing a 200 page essay, sureley. Nevertheless, a hex editor is
without doubt a very useful tool.
>Then, I found its claim that it supports 300 languages(scripts). Wow !
>Does it properly support various South and Southeast Asian scripts?
Okay, okay :) We will define "support" more precisely.
>Again, it does not. It treats combining characters as spacing characters.
>I don't think users of those scripts would regard SC Unipad as supporting
>their scripts/languages.
You are right. I wouldn't write a letter to somebody in German where
the diaresis of an umlaut is displayed on the right side of the base
character. If I want to write a letter there are many word processors
out there which I can use. However, if I have (for instance) the need
to distinguish between 'u with diaresis' and 'u with double acute' I
may need an editor that is able to display those characters separated
and unambiguously. It's your decision whether you need such editor or
a word processor or some other Unicode editor.
I invite everybody to evaluate UniPad. If it's useful for your work,
fine. If not, please consider to re-evaluate it in a couple of month.
Maybe version 1.1 will provide what you need.
With best regards
-- Torsten Mohrin, UniPad Team Sharmahd Computing http://www.unipad.org
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.2 : Tue Aug 27 2002 - 12:13:12 EDT