Re: MS Language Packs

From: Edward Cherlin (cherlin@cauce.org)
Date: Sun Aug 10 1997 - 14:13:41 EDT


At 5:01 AM -0700 8/6/97, Martin J. Duerst wrote:
>On Tue, 5 Aug 1997, Zhenbin Xu wrote:
>
>> This give me the impression that upon the shipping of NT 5, those
>> multilingual software companies such as Gamma and Accent should find no
>> more profit from this market. It is interesting that Gamma claims it
>> provides multilingual solution for Microsoft (IE for example). There are
>> also some other companies invested in developing multilingual controls
>> (OCX). It seems that Microsoft once again put those companies' investment
>> into dead end. They'd better stop those projects right now. (It is a real
>> matter of concern for me since I am involved in the develop of a
>> multilingual word processor and edit control. Sadly enough?)
>
>If you are doing something like Notepad, you definitely will have
>to reconsider your business plan. But there are all kinds of
>functions that the OS doesn't provide, and that may be necessary
>in a word processor for a certain language.
>
>Regards, Martin.

NT5 will not be the OS for the ordinary user. It will take a few years for
these multilingual functions to filter down to the rest of Microsoft's
products, and many years to replace the installed base of Win95, Win3x, and
even DOS that remains in the world. Gamma, Alis, Accent, and other
companies will have plenty of time to move on to other and better products.
For one thing, they will be able to stay ahead of Microsoft on supporting
new scripts for a long time to come. Gamma, in particular, faces no threat
from Microsoft in its original academic niche, where support for all sorts
of dead languages is critical.

--
Edward Cherlin       Help outlaw Spam     Everything should be made
Vice President     http://www.cauce.org      as simple as possible,
NewbieNet, Inc.  3662 members and counting      __but no simpler__.
http://www.newbie.net/    16 Jul 97   Attributed to Albert Einstein



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