BKUNDJIP.RVW  940916

"Understanding Japanese Information Processing", Lunde, 1993, 1-56592-043-0
lunde@adobe.com
%A   Ken Lunde
%C   103 Morris Street, Suite A, Sebastopol, CA   95472
%D   1993
%G   1-56592-043-0
%I   O'Reilly & Associates, Inc.
%O   800-998-9938, nuts@ora.com, brian@ora.com, mary@ora.com
%P   435
%T   "Understanding Japanese Information Processing"

Ken:

Thanks for the book, and my abject apologies for taking so long to get around
to it.  In my defence, all I can say is that several large piles of books
arrived immediately afterwards, and it got buried.  (This excuse, of course, is
completely negated by the fact that I *could* have pulled it out from under,
but didn't bother.)

With a title like that, of course, it's partly your own fault.  Everyone is a
little intimidated by Japanese technology these days.  I figure that since I'm
not a linguist, not into Asian studies, and not about to try to develop
software for sale in Japan, then I didn't need to crack my skull over an
obviously high-powered technical subject, revealing myself as a fraud by
completely missing the point of whatever you were trying to get across.

Well, I was wrong.  And you were right.  (To write the book.)  After reading
the first few pages, I was rivetted.  Your description of the problems of
Japanese (written) representation is fascinating.  The outlines of the
necessary data structures, input methods and output are absolutely clear.  And
your lists of tools, resources, vendors and contacts would save anyone entering
the field months of time in getting up to speed.

A couple of notes:  sometimes you bring up points without having introduced
them first.  For example, in the discussion of Unicode, you mention Kanji being
ordered by radical and stroke count.  Radicals, and the component strokes, have
been described, but the ordering hasn't.  Also, I think you sometimes go
overboard in showing how difficult written Japanese can be.  In discussing the
different pronunciation of the same characters, and the different characters
with the same pronunciation, you could draw an analogy to the English, "I read
that book yesterday," and "I will read that book tomorrow;" and, "I read that
book," versus "That book is red."

Overall, however, you write far too well, you wretch.  Don't you know that it's
against the rules for a technically competent person to generate lucid text? 
Better watch it, or we'll have to take away your nerd licence, and start the
rumour that you are an (ugh!) author!

Got to get the word out somehow that this is *not* just a special interest
textbook.  You've got a really interesting work here, with a lot of concepts
dealing not only with Japanese and not only with multi-lingual applications,
but with data representation, communication and interpretation, as well.

Yours,
Rob

copyright Robert M. Slade, 1994   BKUNDJIP.RVW  940916
 
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