Technical Notes

Use your PC to Master Japanese and Chinese

Smart Characters documents are saved as Ascii files, and can edited by a text editor (e.g., DOS Edit) that uses a font that displays the full extended Ascii code space (e.g., DOS code page(D- - 2) 437, see Ascii Chart(5- 5)). Using such an editor, English text objects(4- 1) are readily recognizable, but other objects do not display as they do in Smart Characters. Instead, you see the codes and text characters that make them up. "

" becomes: "

If an MS-DOS OEM font (e.g., code page 437) is not used, Windows text editors like NotePad display text using the standard Windows code page (# 1007), which does not contain glyphs for the control character(D- - 2) range and for many extended characters. Missing characters display as the missing glyph, typically a rectangle, a period, or a space. Some extended characters display as a missing, while others display as different glyphs:

"_wooden horse_mhä"_f[è[[onesuperior]]__t[_turned over_2[[eth]]‚_pwe."

Special Codes Are Easily Viewable

Smart Characters applies formatting using format codes(D- - 3) that can be examined within Smart Characters by using the Show Codes(3- 8) command, Ascii Only display mode(3- 7), or by a DOS text editor.

How Smart Characters Represents Characters

Smart Characters represents and saves a character not by saving the character images themselves (which would require enormous amounts of memory and storage), but rather by storing a number that refers to the character.

A character number(D- - 2) is directly related to the symbol set(D- - 7) being used. There are several major national standard symbol sets in use. Generally, word processors must use the same symbol set to be compatible. Smart Characters uses its own traditional Chinese and Japanese Combined(4- 9) symbol set, and uses ScConv(D- - 7) to convert between other word processor formats, which use other symbol sets. Additionally, Smart Characters can be used to display and edit documents in native symbol sets without conversion by the addition of a corresponding font for display, and keyboard and dictionaries for input.

How a Character Number Is Stored

A character number(D- - 2) is stored in a document in one of two ways: binary code(D- - 1) for economy of size, and an absolute Ascii code(D- - 1) for extended ranges and keyboard input.

Document Header

Each Smart Characters file has, in the first few lines, a document header(12- 8) which tells which version(D- - 8) of Smart Characters was used to make the file, the default format codes(D- - 3), and which font families, symbol sets(D- - 7), and typefaces(4- 11) are used. The header contains global display mode(3- 7) codes as well.

If you try to open a file that does not match a known Smart Characters version, or has a damaged or missing file document header, Smart Characters will display the File Format(3- 2) dialog for you to choose a file format to convert from or interpret.

Document Size is Larger

In order to preserve all of the context that is present when you type, Smart Characters saves as many of your keystrokes as possible, and does not encode or otherwise diminish them in a way that would lose their context. This makes for a more complex document structure, yielding a benefit for those who need the original context (such as language students or non-native speakers) for ease of understanding. One result of all of this additional information is that one Chinese character can require many additional bytes, which makes documents somewhat larger than with ordinary word processors.

You can delete these additional characters if you must, but first consider that others not as fluent as you may wish to use all or parts of the documents that you write, and they might greatly appreciate the annotations.

Need more info? Go to the Customer Service Page. Questions or comments? E-mail to Apropos Customer Service

Apropos Customer Service home page 617-648-2041
Last Modified: March 23, 1996