Many thanks Jerome, this is a clear and very satisfying explanation; and as always, reality is simultaneously more subtle and cruel than we think it is.
Willem 10:59 am Monday, March 8, 2004 PowerMail PowerMail Engineering sent the following message: >smelik wrote: > >>Thanks - that is a clear explanation. I suppose, then, that lack of Apple >>support was a poor excuse for the lack of multiscript/bidirectional use? >>That the real reason is an evaluation of time investment versus perceived >>advantages? Sad for me personally, because in everything else (especially >>the database) I like PM best. > >OK, here is the complete explanation: >Mac OS used to support a variety of system scripts, including hebrew and >arabic, in Mac OS 7, 8 and 9. Then Mac OS X came, and the support of >these scripts for carbon applications has been totally dropped, except >for chinese, japanese and korean. With 10.2 (or 10.1, I don't remember), >the support of many scripts is back in carbon, but requires to use a >unicode based text engine. Apple provides a carbon unicode text engine >(MLTE), but it is not flexible enough to be used in PowerMail (no way to >highlight URLS, quoted text, insert an object like our short header, use >OS X's spell checker etc). Additionally, MLTE is not widely adopted by >developers, which means that Apple will probably not invest much time to >make it evolve, and could also stop to support it at all (remember >PowerTalk, QuickDraw GX, OpenDoc, HTMLRendering, AIAT... to name a few >technologies that Apple abandoned). >So, the only solution to support semitic languages (and others) in carbon >is to write a unicode text engine using low level unicode carbon APIS >like ATSUI (but CTM is not in the business of writing text engines), or >wait that either Apple or a third party developer make a good unicode >text engine available for carbon applications, which may finally happen >one day. > > >Jérôme - PowerMail Engineering > > >--------------------------------------------------------------------- > "If you need more than Apple Mail, PowerMail is the one, baby. Much > like a fine European car, the dash looks simple and clean; you know > you have the power under the hood when you need it. Fast, effective > and useful" > Daniel M. East, President of the The Mid-Atlantic Macintosh User Groups > > > Download a demo version from www.ctmdev.com >--------------------------------------------------------------------- > >
