Arabic Scripts & System Switcher

0019914MAC 920801 Info Mac Digest Murph Sewall Info-Mac Digest V10 #184: Two systems on one hard disk Date: Sat, 01 Aug 92 01:56:48 EST From: Murph Sewall Subject: Two systems on one hard disk

On Fri, 31 Jul 92 12:45 BST you said: I think the real problem with having two System Folders on one hard disk is not really using them, it's getting them installed properly in the first place! So I hid my English System folder again, booted from Arabic on the hard disk and ran the Installer from the floppy, as before. This time when I went to retrieve the English System, I found it had been "mashed up."

Next time "hide" your English System inside a Compact Pro or StuffIT archive (the installer won't find it there ;)

0007083MAC 910920 Info Mac Digest D.M.Peterson@computer-science.birmingham.ac.uk Info-Mac Digest V9 #220: exotic scripts Date: Fri, 20 Sep 91 15:03:18 BST From: D.M.Peterson@computer-science.birmingham.ac.uk Subject: exotic scripts

I've been asked by a colleague to find out if the Mac can handle the various scripts he uses in his work. He needs to write in arabic (which runs right to left), cirrilic (if that's how it's spelt), and turkish. He also uses a lot of 'diacritical marks'. Does anyone know if these are available for the Mac in a form that's easy to use, and in particular whether right-to-left writing can be handled?

Thanks in advance, Donald Peterson.

0019440MAC 920722 Info Mac Digest eyler%trbilun.bitnet@Forsythe.Stanford.EDU (Akif Eyler) Info-Mac Digest V10 #176: Mulitple scripts in System 7 Date: Wed, 22 Jul 92 10:09:12 +0300 From: eyler%trbilun.bitnet@Forsythe.Stanford.EDU (Akif Eyler) Subject: Mulitple scripts in System 7

From what I vaguely recall, you can copy foreign language scripts and keyboard layouts to an English System 7 file and it should be able to handle them in some way.

Questions about mixed script systems are appearing more and more. The idea is to mix two or more scripts in one system, like Roman (left to right) and Hebrew or Arabic (right to left). Here is a summary of my experiments on this topic.

I started with System 7.0.1 (international version) and added the following: Arabic extension (Extension with a crescent icon) Arabic script (Document with a world icon) Arabic keyboard (Document with a keyboard icon) Font Al Qahirah (FOND id 17920, same as the ones above)

All of these can be dragged into the System folder, the first will go into the extensions folder, the rest into the System suitcase. Make sure that you do this after shift-restart and no applications open.

(Caution: make sure that all the additions described above are taken from a recent system. System 6 components will NOT work.)

It works. My keyboard menu (between the help and application menus on the top right corner) shows US, Turkish, and Arabic in two script groups. Some applications are script-savvy, in that they change the script depending on the document.

Akif Eyler Bilkent University eyler@trbilun.bitnet

Status: O0019886MAC 920731 Info Mac Digest RICHARD LIM Info-Mac Digest V10 #183: Two systems on one hard disk Date: Fri, 31 Jul 92 12:45 BST From: RICHARD LIM Subject: Two systems on one hard disk

I think the real problem with having two System Folders on one hard disk is not really using them, it's getting them installed properly in the first place! I have English and Arabic 7.0.1 on my hard disk and I can tell you it was a big problem getting them there! Originally I had English 7.0.1 and Arabic 6.1 and when I booted from Arabic and ran the Installer to upgrade to Arabic 7, I had no problems - it duly replaced my Arabic System and Finder and cdevs. I had hidden my English System Folder for extra "safety", of course, and retrieved it intact. System Switcher allowed me to switch >From one System to the other with no trouble at all. At this stage however I had only installed a minimal version of Arabic 7.0.1 because I didn't have the disk space. I then decided to make more room and install the full System. So I hid my English System folder again, booted from Arabic on the hard disk and ran the Installer from the floppy, as before.

This time when I went to retrieve the English System, I found it had been "mashed up". What the Installer had done is trash my English System file and Finder and all the English Apple cdevs and extensions, but not INITs from other sources which remained in their original folders. It hadcreated a separate new Arabic System folder containing all the required bits, but in Arabic of course.

If you think about it, it's not hard to figure out what happened. The Installer looked around, realised that there were other System 7 files/ cdevs lying around and just cleaned them up. I think this didn't happen the first time when I upgraded from Arabic 6.1 to 7 because the Installer concentrated on replacing the System that was booted from, and in any case System 6 files have different file types and creators from System 7 So for those of you thinking of having KanjiTalk and whatever other system on one hard drive, my advice is: don't worry about switching between them but if I were you back up the existing system and then use the Installer. When you copy the old System back, ask System Switcher to search for System folders and your old System will be recognised as bootable.

PS: I haven't managed to pull off Akif Eyler's trick of installing foreign language scripts, extensions and keyboard layouts into an English System 7 file either. I get exactly the same behaviour that the lady trying to do this with Hebrew observed a couple of issues back. This really OUGHT to work - we must have overlooked something simple.