Laurent wrote:

...
>This linking is real progress; it was not available a couple of
>years back because the KCHR change was a global system issue
>not necessarily accessible from within an arbitrary application.

I must say that with Language Kit it has been there since 7.1. Though things have improved. Though you are probably right that it has become more accessible, for scripting, macros etc.

>Nisus Writer 6.03 costs about $100-$130 and BBEdit something similar.

Let me then quote last NISUS newsletter:
>we are offering Nisus Writer
>for as little as $41.95 for the upgrade, or $84.95 for the full version.
>While I am at it, those of you who have the free Nisus Writer 4.1.6
>can upgrade to the latest version of Nisus Writer for only $59.95

If you are smart you register your free version of NW 4.1.6 and upgrade.

>Does the free (still?) BBEdit_Lite_6.1 of 2001 have the mentioned
>UNICODE features?  (I have been waiting for some compelling reason to
>unwrap it ;).

BBEdit lite do not have unicode. Another pal however, Pepper, from hekkelmannprogrammatur (I probably misspelled the name...), has Unicode. It also support TeX. At least TeX syntax. And then we have latest version(s) of Style. Full unicode support.

>Does BBEdit or Nisus offer all manner of conversions between the
>various unicode variants including UTF8, UTF16, ... ??
>I hear they are virtually readymade in recent Mac OSs.

BBEdit can save in UTF-8. NW is included with apple-scripts which lets you convert text, with help of Text Encoding Converter in Systemfolder, to all the encodings TEC support, which also includes Unicode/UTF-7,-8. The NW-solution is not perfect though, of course.

....
>> >But what about casual students of Russian in Norway who
>> >lack the resources to acquire a Russian keyboard? They will
>> >surely want to make do with their Norweigan Mac keyboard.
>> >I'll address that problem in another post explaining the
>> >solution I have devised.
>>
>> But as I said above: it is possible with a Cyrillic QWERTY keyboard
>> layout also, right?
>
>As explained elsewhere, if this means the Mac KCHR resource for Russia,
>then it will give satisfactory service *only* if you suitably label 33
>or more physical keys. Even then it will be "hunt-and-peck" for a long
>time. The labeling is painful enough that it has not been a "done
>thing" for decades. But send this "Cyrillic QWERTY keyboard layout" to
>me so I can be sure I understand.

Ok. But you need cyrillic kit to make use of it.

>I tend to look around for a keyboarding system that requires a minimum
>of prerequisites so that absolutely everyone is equipped to use it.
>What I went on to recommend yesterday had zero prerequisites inasmuch
>as it works *not* just with a superb wordprocessor like Nisus Writer but
>with any editor that supports one arbitrarily selected 256 character
>font. Just free FOND,NFNT, and KCHR resources (from me)  are needed plus a list of
>active character definitions.  Maybe 40K max in all. $0. Certainly
>affordable to poor students of Russian.

When they have tutor not too far away I am sure they can get it to work also  :-) Most mac-users will gasp when they hear of FOND, NFNT and KCHR...

>The greatest weakness was the need for one KCHR per national
>keyboard and per "West_European_and_Russian" encoding.

In the Cyrillic Lang Kit that comes wiht OS 9 and 9.1 there is both German-Russian-QWERTZ and French-Russian AZERTY phonetic keyboard layout resources. But, alas, no similar Norwegian keyboards...

>When we have broader Mac unicode support this last dependency will
>disappear while dependence on national keyboard will remain.
>
>But you are no poor student, so naturally you should have less
>trouble!

You remind me about me when I was about to buy a super-filter to my vacuum cleaner recently. I remembered how expensive it was some years ago... I in fact dismissed buying it for a few years because of that... I just found out that it had been for no reason... (Now I also managed to tell how rich I am...)

>What you probably need for typing with your brand new Nisus Writer
>with its nice unicode features,

No unicode features yet there, alaos. See above.

> is probably nothing more than my poor
>student's KCHR for the very special case of the US QWERTY physical
>keyboard and the Macintosh Cyrillic 256 char encoding, rather than
>for the Norwegian physical keyboard and an exotic 256 character
>encoding. That KCHR will be used only when typing Russian and will be
>switched out when typing Norwegian.  This Cyrillic keyboarding setup
>for Nisus will work because the *physical* Norwegian keyboard is
>QWERTY where the ASCII letters are concerned. (And it won't work with
>the physical French AZERTY keyboard!.)
>
>In summary you need just:
>
>  -- one new QWERTY-Cyrillic KCHR (from me; give me 24 hours)
>  -- list of active character definitions > 127
>(from Vladimir if you use LaTeX; I could supply it for Plain TeX).

I give you as many hours you need... I am a TeX novice. If I follow your prescription I might learn some things. And then I can reapply it for my own needs...

>and you will use the Mac encoded Russian fonts that you already have.
>No Shift-Lock keystroke is involved in shifting between Norwegian and
>Russian. Nisus will be required for one-key language-switching while
>typing. (On the other hand, the poor student's solution would be
>available system-wide.)
>
>Thanks to your excellent description of your desires and available
>software, it looks like I am in a position to be of real help.

:-) Well, yes :-)
--
leif