IMUG Past Events Archive
1994 Events
The list below includes full a description of each talk when that could be copied from the original Usenet posts. We are gathering more descriptions from paper archives, and hope to post those here soon.
1994 |
Speaker / Affiliation |
Topic |
1/20/94 |
Kamal Mansour |
Basics of the Arabic Script |
Upon first glance, the Arabic script appears graphically complex and unusually ornate. Has this been your experience? If so, join us in finding out why first impressions need not remain true. We will discuss the basic building blocks of Arabic writing. Is it alphabetic, syllabic, or ideographic? Where are the vowels hiding? Why are there dots scattered everywhere? Do you have to write it "backwards"? What are those tiny marks above and below the letters? Are the Phoenicians behind all of this? Which present-day languages are written in the Arabic script? Which major languages have quit using the Arabic script? Why? How is the Arabic script related to the scripts of other Semitic languages? How did the Arabic script become what it is today? If you are interested in localizing a software product to Arabic, how much about Arabic do you need to know? Join us as we discuss the script used by the sixth official language of the United Nations.
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2/17/94 |
Rutie Adler |
Hebrew Software for Learning and Teaching |
Rutie Adler will demonstrate software which she developed for the use of students learning Hebrew at UC Berkeley. She will preface her demonstration by talking about the motivation for developing software for teaching foreign languages in general and for the Hebrew program at Berkeley in particular; about the unique problems she encountered in developing the software and how it will be integrated into the Hebrew program.
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3/17/94 |
Andrew Kirk, Keisoku Giken KK |
MacSurfing the Internet in Kanji and Hanzi |
Explore the International Information Highway live with Jim and Andrew as they seek out the seldom traveled nooks and crannies of the Asian Internet. Learn how to read, display, and compose Japanese and Chinese messages on your Mac. Watch them login (legally!) to archive sites by anonymous "ftp" in Tokyo, Hong Kong, and Singapore (and maybe Thailand) and download free Mac software. Watch them locate and read Japanese and Chinese Usenet news groups in Kanji and Hanzi. Be amazed as they find and grab Asian dictionaries from Australia, public domain Japanese fonts from Japan, and Vietnamese fonts from Singapore. Discover the vast free archives of Chinese poetry and ancient classics including all the writings of the sages Confucius (Kong Fu Zi) and Laotse (Lao Zi) in English and Chinese. Read original Tang poetry in Chinese and English, especially by JimUs favorite, Li Bai. Don't miss this exciting, informative, online demonstration of the Asian Internet. Handouts will be prepared for attendees to use as a guide to locating and downloading Asian language enabling software on their own Mac, all for free.
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4/21/94 |
Roland Horne |
Experiences in Developing a Multilingual Software Application in MS-Windows — English / Chinese / Japanese & Others |
5/19/94 |
(No meeting) |
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6/16/94 |
Jennifer Meighan |
How to Perform Effective International Marketing within a Limited Budget |
Many software companies don't view international sales as a top priority within their organization, hence they provide very limited budgets to their international staff. This is a mistake, since many developers enjoy over 50% of their business from overseas sources. We're going to take a look at ways to do "guerrilla marketing" in order to boost your presence, and hence sales, overseas. This in turn may persuade your boss to sign off on more marketing money for your international efforts. We'll focus on some of the top markets, talk about new, up-and-coming markets, pros and cons, review various marketing practices, what works and what doesn't, and some free and paid services available on the market and in our industry.
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7/21/94 |
John McConnell |
Unicode on the Macintosh |
John McConnell, the technical lead for Apple's Unicode project, will discuss the integration of Unicode into the Macintosh operating system. One of the main themes will be an evolutionary approach to Unicode, that is how Unicode can co-exist with other encodings on the Macintosh. In particular, he'll talk about the three stages Apple plans for Unicode support. He will also talk about some of the difficulties, for example, why Unicode cannot be just another script. Stage I focuses on interoperability and providing excellent round-trip conversion to existing encodings. John will cover the Unicode converter design, the use of Unicode as a hub for character encoding conversion, and talk about some of the problems his team has encountered. Stage II covers the new text model for the Macintosh that will support Unicode. John will cover deficiencies of the current Macintosh string model and describe some of the alternatives they've considered and the relative tradeoffs. He'll also talk about possible future extensions of the text model. Stage III represents the complete integration of Unicode into the Macintosh. Besides the basic system support, this includes tools such as compilers and frameworks. John will close by demonstrating a prototype of the Unicode converter.
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8/18/94 |
Chris Warnock |
Adobe Acrobat |
9/15/94 |
Emmanuel Uren |
Quality Issues in Internationalization and Localization |
10/20/94 |
Dave Opstad |
International Text and Link Handling in QuickDraw GX |
Now that Apple's System 7.5 has been released, QuickDraw GX is finally in the hands of users. What can those users expect from QuickDraw GX applications and fonts, particularly for non-Roman text? This IMUG presentation will discuss the richness of GX text rendering, showing examples in many different scripts, including Arabic, Urdu, Hindi, Japanese, Mongolian and Roman. Topic to be discussed include: One of the main benefits of GX text is that all scripts have access to all capabilities. This means a greatly increased repertoire of textual effects, for example Roman fonts that use Indic-style rearrangement and insertion to get Pig Latin, or Japanese fonts that include ligatures. We'll see examples of these.
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11/17/94 |
Martin Rice |
Why Use Computers in Foreign Language Learning? |
Outline: Martin P. Rice is the founder, chairman, and director of product development of the HyperGlot Software Co., Knoxville, TN, a wholly-owned subsidiary of The Learning Company, Fremont, CA. Martin is a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania and later received his Ph.D. in Russian language and literature from Vanderbilt University. He was professor of Germanic and Slavic languages and literatures at the University of Tennessee for twenty years. During his tenure at UT, he also held the position of Coordinator of Humanities Computing Development.
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12/15/94 |
Natasha Vinnichenko |
The Cyrillic Alphabet |
The Cyrillic alphabet is used by approximately 400 million people worldwide. It is similar to the Roman alphabet in some ways - however, many of the apparent similarities are misleading. Natasha Vinnichenko will discuss the questions: What are the origins of this alphabet? Why is it called Cyrillic? How is it related to Greek? What are its current forms? Where is it used? What is distinct about the letters? What are [sorry, these characters won't make it across the internet]? When are "H", "B", and "P" not what they seem? Come to learn more about the "kirillitsa" alphabet.
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