On Fri, 25 Mar 2005 08:12:36 -0500, Peter T. Daniels
<grammatim@...> wrote:

> Unlike you, I'm not able to work for free, but those I do work for don't
> pay me regularly or enough to buy new computers every few months.

I'm not commenting one way or the other on that, only on the time scale,
and in a fashion that might be helpful to Peter (T. D.).

The progressive i18n of computers[1] happens more on a time scale of years
than months. I believe we have pointed out ways that probably would permit
you to spread your wings into the atmosphere of your specialty, somewhat,
at perhaps no cost[2].

[1] That's something that has held my interest ever since subscribing to
the Early-M[usic] List around 1995, and maybe even earlier. Copepage 850
is *not* Latin-1! Argh! Please, no codepoint-remapping, OK? That was the
beginning. Then, I discovered Alan Flavell, then Kosta Kostis, and began a
new adventure. Jukka Korpela, Markus Kuhn, Roman Czyborra, and (not the
least, by far, Alan Wood), among others... (and then, the Unicode 1.0
manuals (I bought only Vol. 1))

[2] Summary, as I see it:

Find out how to tell which version of the Mac operating system you have;
it's not hard. (7? 8? You need more detail.) Wise to write that down. No
more strange than keeping track of details of a car when going to the shop
with it. (No, I didn't own a car for long, after moving from upstate to
149 W. 108th St.; I know.)

Try to get in (better) touch with Mac owners (In NYC, there are about half
a scad of oodles of them, I'm confident), and tell them that you want to
use fonts for other languages/writing systems. Hint: Don't voluntarily
tell them who you are; WWS doesn't seem to be well-known in the computer
community, probably unfortunately. Speak sweetly, and you might even be
*given* a more-recent model of Mac, and free floppies, pro bono, with
useful fonts and an updated OS.

Keep your floppies safe, make backups, and put them Elsewhere.

===

I have, incidentally, cited my 1992-vintage (iirc) 16-MHz 386-based
machine that could swap codepages (think Codepage 819 is obscure? :) ) for
all of '8859 up to about -10. When that machine was new, 16 MB of RAM (all
it could take) cost $5,040 US.

Peace, gentlemen.

--
Nicholas Bodley /*|*\ Waltham, Mass.
The curious hermit -- autodidact and polymath
who also likes knackebröd
and would love to have a double-layer DVD burner, but will wait.