Browsing International Fonts

[Allen M.]

I stumbled across this website a few minutes ago, and could read the writing as clear as can be. Wonder if This is possible through only Internet Explorer?
http://hp.pccenter.ru/metallica/

The broken link to the desired site is
http://hp.pccenter.ru/metallica/texts/metallica/nothing_else_matters_en.html

Anthony, Scott, I know you like these guys.

Anyone else out there that their browser works/works not with Cyrillic fonts?


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Allen, Home: http://www.ury2k.com/ mirror: http://home.ici.net/~uechi/

[Dakkon]

Netscape 4.08 had no problems
Granted I can't read Russian it was all there

Chuck

[Allen M.]

I remember the days when one had to rewrite the entire ASCII character set in memory to synthesize the Cyrillic alphabet, then remap the keyboard in order to get the correct character to display on the screen. This was in the days before windows and laser printers. Now, the most advanced printer of the time was called a daisy-wheel printer. In order to change fonts all one had to do was to pop the cover off the printer, and replace the wheel with one of another font. A second program had to be written to remap the remapped CRT ASCII to the mapping of the Cyrillic daisy wheel.

Now, this remapping worked well with WordStar, the world's premier word processor of the day. However, you also had to get into WordStar itself, and modify it a little with assembly language.

Today, there is Unicode. I often write in Unicode, and it is built into the operating system of today, but I was surprised to see something automatically appear recognizably correct, when, say for instance you bring-up an oriental website often the characters are totally unreadable as the characters of the language unless they are a graphic.


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Allen, Home: http://www.ury2k.com/ mirror: http://home.ici.net/~uechi/

[Dakkon]

Ahhh Wordstar a 5.5" Diskette at 320KBs if memory serves me. With room left over!
Those where the days. Nowadays you don't even consider a 3.5" diskette @1.44megs a storage medium. 400meg HDD's were thought to be impossible to fill. Now we have games that install at over 1gig and Office 97-2000 installs at around 300+megs. 20 gig drives cost $150 where as a 400meg back when was $1k+
Yes Daisy Wheel was HOT till Dot Matrix was around. Good lord the noise those two made could drive you out of the house some times.
Reinking a ribon was uncommon, Refilling a Ink jet is common. 2 ppm on the old impact printers was blazing fast. 8 ppm is slow now adays.
Wow have we come along or what?

Chuck

[Allen M.]

I remember I just about had to chain my daisy wheel printer down else feared it would jump right off the table. It really asserted itself when it printed a character.

Do you remember the ASCII line printers, Chuck? Now THEY were machines...

WordStar. The entire wordprocessor on one 5-1/4 320K disk with plenty of room left over to store your documents. My, haven't we advanced so far since those primitive days?

I had a CP/M computer called a Superbrain (I called it a Stupid Brain because of the heart ache it gave when it overheated). The monitor, keyboard, and computer was one sleek-looking piece [of...] with the then unheard of hard disk with 5 megs [that's right, 5 whopping megs] of disk data storage to meet the needs of the most demanding software developer.

Today, if one is smart, he can put together the meanest machine that anyone's seen for less than 2 grand. Cyberworld is moving so fast, I'm starting to get dizzy.



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Allen, Home: http://www.ury2k.com/ mirror: http://home.ici.net/~uechi/

[Lori]

As long as we're reminiscing here...

When I worked as a "junior librarian" for a storage systems company at the Cape (Space Program) I had to actually boot the PC with a DOS disk (maybe before versions even) and then the old programs (Visicalc, Wordstar etc.) were on the old 5 1/4" (wasn't it 360K?) with as you say - plenty of room to store your docs... and then trying to help the secretaries with those old Wang word processors (we are still talking space program here) that had those noisy clangy disk drives with the 8" disks - remember those? Those were still in use in the 90's believe it or not! Then again, I hear that part of the network that launches the space shuttle still has old IBM AT's linked to it.

Mega progress but a loss of simplicity (does anyone actually WRITE a letter anymore?) - pros and cons of technological advances could make a mile long list.

As far and as fast as we've come we still have a bunch of junk out there hopelessly entangled in the cyber system that is eventually going to control everything!

Yea yea yea - black helicopters - I know.

[Allen M.]

People will still control people, Lori, whether they use the internet or do it face-to-face. In some ways the internet has isolated people, and in other ways it has taught isolated types interpersonal skills. Kind of reminds me of the isolationism of this country before the interstate system was built, or the days before word processors when their emotions would flow into the ink which dried to the cursive style of the day.

IBM's first PC 5-1/4 floppy was a single-sided 320K, which obsoleted the 8" floppy of computers which you could build yourself, and was eclipsed by the 360K before the advent of the 720K double-sided floppy which the 1.2Meg 5-1/4 then obsoleted.

I remember three ways to program computers in the early days. The last of the three was to roll a strip of black paper with holes punched in it, around a cylinder, feed the other end into a slot, similar to loading a new roll of film (remember film? That stuff before digital cameras, right?). The second was to flip 8 toggle switches on a front panel, and when convinced the settings were correct push a large red button to enter the single line of code into the computer.

The third is still a vivid method. I would spend months penciling in characters on a piece of paper at MIT Lincoln Labs, which was to become my programs. when complete I would take this paper to another building. Within two weeks I would get a call to pick up a bunch of punched cards, similar to index cards except larger. Then spend a couple more weeks comparing the listing to the cards. One mistake and the whole batch (batch processing, know the term, heh, heh), had to be keypunched with another several week wait.

The vividness? I had a whole box of these cards, which represented my stunning accomplishment of the day, in my arms as I started my ascent up the stairs while looking up instead of where I should have been looking.

Now, once those cards have a spec of dirt on them, or have been shuffled, the whole operation had to be restarted from day one. Oh, yes. Those were the good old days when programs did only one thing: crunch mathematical formulas to run the automatic flight control subsystems of long sleek black airplanes which can fly into space, of nuclear powered satellites or to catch radio signals sent straight through the earth to a submarine sitting quietly on the bottom of the ocean several thousand feet down awaiting her next orders, and not wimpy windows stuff which requires several thousand lines of code just to present a dialogue box on the screen so someone can put a check in a box. Those were the days when real software engineers didn't eat quiche and didn't drink bud-lite.


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Allen, Home: http://www.ury2k.com/ mirror: http://home.ici.net/~uechi/

[Dakkon]

Lori,
Yes they still have old 286's and lower lauching the shuttle. I know a I.T. person up there and have taken a tour of some of the server areas:ekk:
Yes, I agree email has almost taken the art of a written letter away from a lot of people. I mean email is instant no waiting hurry hurry hurry! Where as a handwriten letter may take a week to get there. But there is something personal to a handwritten letter, a part of the person is on that piece of paper.
Allen,
LOL you have lived on the bleeding edge for a while it sounds I can imagine triping on the stairs with a box of cards. Yes, now adays we have O/S's that clock in at 2 million lines of code. They take away 700 megs of a drive and we think it's just great. Yet there are people out there with a DOS 5 or lower machine running on a 386 w/4megs and 5.25 floppies and loving it.
Ahhh the good ol' days or where they?

Chuck

[Allen M.]

Another thing about the written letter is that the writer is afforded tine to think about what he has written on the way to the post office, and has the luxury of time to allow a decision to not send the letter creep into his options. With email, the enter key is just too close, and the decision to NOT transmit can manifest itself only after it is sent, sometimes as soon as the enter key is pressed.

When a handwritten letter is created, multiple drafts may find their way to the wastebasket before the final work of art has been achieved. Definitely as you put it, a piece of the person is sent with surface mail. It is awful difficult to send grease smudges or perfume via the internet.

Actually, if software was not my career forcing me to continually forge ahead else get lost, I might not even own a pc, they just rob too much of the short time we have to enjoy the fruits of this earth.

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Allen, Home: http://www.ury2k.com/ mirror: http://home.ici.net/~uechi/

[gmattson]

Anyone need a computer ribbon re-inking machine?

One of these days I plan on throwing it out!!

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GEM

[Allen M.]

I've always wanted to re-ink my computer. Donate it to the circular museum.

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Allen, Home: http://www.ury2k.com/ mirror: http://home.ici.net/~uechi/