Digest Number 258

[Guest guest]

>The addiction to Drama has serious consequences for our whole culture.

 

Minor point, but I would say *need* for Drama, and I would say that

properly channelled it's created our whole culture and that imagination

has created our entire civilisation. Improperly channelled of course,

they've torn us apart.

 

 

Ged

[Guest guest]

> Message: 5

> Sun, 02 Jul 2000 23:10:01 -0000

> " Sebastian Davidsen " <sebastian

> Searching for suitable database systems

>

> I work , when I can, on my computer with a database for chinese

> medicine.

> The problem is how to get a platform that enables both chinese

> characters (I only demand simplified so far, not to make it extreme)

> and western languages at the same time, for search and edit.

> Until now I have experimentated with macintosh and the programe

> Filemaker 4.0.

> But, here there are problems (I dont have the taiwanese version of

> Filemaker and it is out of production so haven't tried that, only

> english vers.), because (western) Filemaker cant deal with

> " 2 byte languages " - the system used for chinese (and many other

> non western languages).

> This does that you can write chinese characters n Filemaker, but

> you cant effectively edit in the chinese texts.

> Some people live with that and work with other programs where they

> prepeare the text, but I need it more efficient, lots of chinese etc.

 

> I also understand that world script for western FM's are not the tool

> with the sollution.

> And that (probably - or as far as I know) no one have has made a plug

> in for FIlemaker to handle it. (its the same problem for windows

> versions of filemaker i think).

 

Sebastian,

 

Could you be more specific about the problems you are having editing Chinese

text in FileMaker? I, for one, have never had difficulty working with

Chinese text in FileMaker 3 (I haven't tried it in FM 4), up to and

including search and replace requests. Which version of the Chinese Language

Kit and the Mac OS are you using?

 

I'd caution you against switching platforms if you need a usable database

package and Chinese support on the same system. If you need a more powerful

editing tool than the one offered in FileMaker to edit your fields, you

might consider using AppleScript to integrate FileMaker and Nisus Writer or

WordPerfect or Style. It would require some effort, but it could prevent

your suffering in the long run.

 

If you are talking about the problem where FileMaker displays Chinese

characters as Roman gibberish, there are two solutions: manually choose a

Chinese font from the font menu while the field you wish to work on is

selected, or edit the field's default font in Layout mode to be a Chinese

font.

 

Hope this helps.