RE: query

From: Marco.Cimarosti@icl.com
Date: Thu Oct 19 2000 - 13:33:43 EDT


Carl W. Brown wrote:
> Double byte enabling DOS is no minor feat. It is not a
> driver but a new
> operating system. If you are tight on memory your
> applications may not run
> because the DBCS support adds overhead. About 5 years ago we
> gave up on
> DBCS DOS projects because they were too much grief. Hardware
> is not that
> expensive any more. The excuse no longer holds up.
> Considering that a good
> Chinese font is 3-10Mb, using DOS just does not make sense.

Carl, a lot of special devices and embedded stuff are still in DOS, and
there is little one can do (although I would expect that solutions based on
newer palmtop OS's also exist on the market).

I think I know the kind of hardware Joshua is talking about, as we use them
a lot in retail systems: they are not PC's, but rather special hand held
devices, used for making inventories in shops. They have an integrated
barcode reader and a small keyboard (sometimes only numeric; sometimes with
also QWERTY... or ABCDE... alphanumeric keys).

I don't understand why you say that double-byte enabling DOS is such a
nightmare. Before Windows 3.x became the standard, there used to be lots of
Chinese and Japanese software for DOS. There are editors, word processors,
libraries, and add-ons (well, TSR's) to make the whole operationg system
double-byte.

Of course, these solutions did not use Unicode or TrueType fonts, but rather
GB or JIS and monospaced bitmapped fonts. But if the solution has to be
Unicode, it is not such a big deal to bang out a minimal Unicode library
implementing, say:

1) UTF-8 handling, and maybe also UTF-16;

2) Unicode to DBCS (GB or JIS) conversion for the display.

The only problem I see is that this old software is not on shops shelves
anymore, so getting all the needed pieces requires some digging on Internet
or bargain shops.

_ Marco



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