Has Apple left Greece out of the X Game?

M

mitsakos

Registered
I am from Greece and THE major problem we have here with Macs is Greek Language - compatibility between mac and windows Text Encoding. Text encoding converter does a good job for that but ONLY when the country in System Resources is GREECE (that means if we have the GREEK version of MacOS). That means that text encoding converter with a U.S. MacOS does absolutely nothing. (A File named "HELLO" (in greek) on a mac shows ">%^&O" on a PC!)

We here at our MUG of Thessaloniki, Greece want MacOS X:

1. To have transparent compatibility via Unicode fonts with Mac text encoding in the Finder, BUT use text encoding converter to be compatible with Windows ISO 8859-7 encoding when writing filenames to external disk devices or CDs.

2. All Applications should automatically use windows greek encoding for saving files, via system level convert. We should not depend on an application to use correct greek on the same file on Windows and Mac. i.e. Office 98 uses text encoding converter IF it is istalled on a GREEK MacOS and its files, if gone to windows work flawlessly. Office 2001 does not use the text encoding converter like 98, and Office 2001 's files uses MAC encoding Greek so on windows you see ----/.//....---..----. something like that.

3. GREEK KEYBOARD LAYOUT
4. GOOD GREEK FONTS
5. Some basic windows greek fonts like Arial and Times new Roman, must be FULL unicode fonts on mac, so a file going to a PC does not need additional work there. (the GrHelvetica font I use on a mac does not match anything on the PC and I have to choose there a new font- so its extra work)

Excuse me but I would like to be able to work here in Greece like YOU people do THERE in the States when talking about FILE compatibility between mac & PC! And all that through a Supported Greek MacOS X system right out of the box in 24 of March 2001!!! I heard that you will have ALL the languages in the MacOS X Release! Dont forget Greek Language! We have a really Apple unsupported Greek encoding here, and we cannot communicate with our PC collegues!!!! That is why the Macs in Greece are not going too well. APPLE, YOU MUST FIX THIS WITH OS X!!! I HOPE SOMEONE LISTENS OR THE MAC IN GREECE WILL DIE!

P.S. Omniweb does a very good work! It shows Greek Pages like a charm! But internet explorer and iCab (as of version 2.4) in MacOS X show anything but greek on greek web pages. Try it yourselves on http://www.in.gr.
 
I use the greek encoding (greek worldscript) to do various things in greek (I am greek)... there arent a lot of macs in greece due to the compatibility factor....

I am AGAINST using microsoft standards on a mac, I think that Apple should use universal (i.e. real) standards so that mac encodings will work on any P.C. or UNIX OS.

When I write documents on MS word and e-mail them to my friends, and when I write e-mail in greek, using worldscipt, which I found online (should be the same as in the Greek version of MacOS) there usually arent any problems. I have HUGE problems trying to write my web page in greek on the mac and having PCs and Mac users using IE be able to read it... oh the horror. I hope that OS X is both localized and has greek fonts/keyboard layouts included with it.... or else I aint switching. I would rather use OS 9 and have my languages there rather than go on a madman search on the insternet trying to find free fonts/KB layouts for macOS. (I went through hell and back to try to find greek worldscript (which apple discontinued btw) on the new.


APPLE LISTEN TO US...WE NEED GREEK ON OS X JUST LIKE THE SPANISH NEED THEIR LAYOURS, THE GERMANS THEIRS, THE RUSSIANS THEIRS, AND THE JAPANESE THEIRS...DO NOT SHUT US OUT! (or I forsee greece going all PC... something I dont want to happen)


Admiral
http://come.to/AdmiralAK
 
1: Greek, Arabic, Chinese and Japanese names all show up in the finder with the correct letters in my version.

2: Your site shows up perfect in IE

I have OSX PB (first release) and set to English.

DJ
 
I haven't seen my site in OS X (neither with IE nor omniweb).
My claims are based on pre X MacOSs ( OS 9) and with IE
My site works well now for one reason....
I kinda worked my way around, using VPC with windows 98SE to write up the
greek, and then export it to MacOS so that I do other tasks.

If I wrote something like
¡åéÀ óïù
(Hello in greek), as HTML IE would have a problem. In forms, e-mails, and anything that doesnt have to do with HTML there is no problem... it's SO weird....
Oh well....
I think I am going to campaing for "UNICODE ON OS X" LOL... (so that I wont have to jump through loops to do my greek pages :p)


Admiral
btw do you speak/read/write greek ?
 
I did not know anything about worldscript! what is that?

I am glad some people here know about the problems! If you look a ANY greek page, IE does a mistake! the letters with "tonos" on a them (making the letter sound louder in the word when the word is read) are mistaken and changed by a "?"

but on omniweb everything is fine!

look its a matter of 2 different greek character sets (mac and WIN.dos), 2 different greek keyboard layouts, 2 different greek font layouts IE, iCab netscape and microsoft word have taken their own way of translating between the two. combinig all these you see that if a layout to layout translation happens between all these you never know what happens! WE NEED NEW GREEK LAYOUT. A NEW STANDARD! UNICODE THAT IS! NEW unicode greek fonts, new unicode greek keyboard! thats what I want on PC, on a MAC, or on LINUX! and an app that converts unicode truetype fonts from mac to pc to windows file formats!

Simple huh? but great!
 
Worldscript is what you get (I think) with the greek version of MacOS
Worldscript is a technology which is used in the Apple Language kits.
Greek (and other languages) use worldscript ;) It is apple's standrad I think...

Well... as a personal "history" this is what I had used
First I used ELOT928 fonts & layouts (ISO 8859-7 compliant I think) --> OK for writting but web pages could not be read on Macs & PCs that did not have ELOT928 on them

Then I used the Greek Languake Kit (i.e. macgreek) --> this solves almost all my mac/pc problems. I can write everything except HTML. It is true that when you write something in windows and then a mac tried to view it accented characters (characters with a "tonos") show up as question marks ( "?") . I had struggled with this, but I figured out a copy/paste way of doing it that produces good results :)
(My main greek page doent work in this issue of my web page, it only works in macgreek, because I made a small mistake in teh copy/paste sequence, but all my other pages work...)

I have yet to see any unicode for OS 9, I hope unicode is on OS X because unicode would be a true standard, set neither by apple nor by MS.


Admiral
 
The ELOT-928 fonts/keyboard package for the mac is not fully iso-8859-7 compatible because it uses the macgreek encoding (which is awfully non-standard... even the windoze "standard" is closer to the ISO one). Lots of problems when typing in elot-928 and trying to read the result from browsers, word-processor etc.

I have pretty expensive experience with using greek input in various systems and the ranking in descending order of usability-interoperability is Windoze-Unix/Linux-Mac (unfortunately).

OS X PB has full unicode support BUT lacks a decent input method for non-roman script (i.e. no greek keyboard with the Unicode mapping).

Also, probably because of the unicode support, the IE in Mac OS X PB could not render the intonated greek characters. However, I could open in the Mac OS X PB text editor a RTF file from MS Word for Mac (in greek, written with a keyboard other than the elot928-p) and it was perfect! Go figure.

I am afraid the vast majority of the people out there are not prepared for unicode (2-byte character) support and this will cause further interoperability problems.

I would like to find out whether the final OS X has support for non-roman keyboards. Anyone kind enough to let me know?

Thanks

TG

P.S.: I am willing to contribute/host a good web page for using greek input on a modern mac in a way that offers the ultimate interoperability and standard conformance. The good thing about X Window is that there is ONLY ONE standard: the iso-8859-7 (the MS "standard" differs by a few characters, for example: intonated capital A). It's just a pain for the lay user to configure the system. You can see my instruction for using greek from my Stanford days:

http://www.stanford.edu/group/hellas/unixgreek.html
 
I know how you feel about ELOT928 on the mac...
I had it as a "standard" since it was under some sort of compatibility with ISO8859-7 ....
man was that a mistake... I wrote in it and it looked fine, and when I sent people documents nothing would be seen! ..gggrrrr... then I discovered apple's worldscript.

Apparently is still uses macgreek (I wish it werent so) BUT when I write something in MS word or in a text file and send it to people, PC people CAN read it! When I do the same in an HTML file...things go horribly wrong.

Apple's aging greek worldscript can read pages made in windows encoded greek (yay ) and can read almost all greek in files.

I wish apple had implemented an input method (and included greek as a localized part.... 7 languages are nice and I like the italian, german, and french since I can practice ... but I would have liked greek on there)

I think unicode should be the standard everywhere because this is a global thing now. The age where cuontries were isolated is over....

Any timetables out there when greek (and cyrillic ) will be available for OS X ?

Lack of grek input is one reason that I am holding back on an OS X purchase
 
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