Editor for 98

[modicr]

Hello!

Did you try BabelPad: http://www.babelstone.co.uk/Software/BabelPad.html ?

BabelPad uses Microsoft's Unicode Script processor, Uniscribe (filename usp10.dll), to format and render Unicode text. The more recent a version of Uniscribe you have installed on the computer the better support you will have for complex scripts such as Indic and south-east Asian scripts, Tibetan and Mongolian. The version of Uniscribe that BabelPad is using is indicated in the About BabelPad... dialogue box.

Uniscribe should come pre-installed on Windows 2000 and Windows XP, and should also have been installed if you are running Internet Explorer Version 5 or above on other Windows operating systems. However Uniscribe may not be available on some PCs running Windows 95, 98, ME or NT 4.0 that do not have Internet Explorer 5 or above. If when you attempt to run BabelPad, a dialog box entitled "Unable to Locate DLL" with the message "The dynamic link library USP10.dll could not be found in the specified path" appears, this means that Uniscribe is not installed on your PC.

Uniscribe is constantly being updated to support new scripts and to add new functionality to existing script support, so it is important that you have the latest possible version of Uniscribe installed on your PC. Even if you do not use complex scripts, you will only get advanced features for Latin script such as ligatures with a recent version of Uniscribe (to see this try entering <s ZWJ t> with Code2000). You may run BabelPad with a particular version of Uniscribe by simply placing a copy of the Uniscribe file (usp10.dll) in the same directory that BabelPad.exe is located. Note that the latest beta version of Uniscribe is available to members of the Microsoft VOLT Users Community.

Some versions of Uniscribe may have bugs that may cause BabelPad to crash. Those that I know of are outlined below :

Versions of Uniscribe greater than Version 1.405.2416.1 may only work correctly when running under the Windows XP operating system. The following unexpected display behaviour may be observed in BabelPad's character map utility when running under Windows 95/98/ME, Windows NT4 or Windows 2000 with a version of Uniscribe that is greater than Version 1.405.2416.1 :

Strange characters displayed in the range U+0000 through U+001F of the Basic Latin block

Strange characters displayed in the range U+0080 through U+009F of the Latin-1 Supplement block

Only digits displayed for Indic scripts (including Tibetan and Mongolian) if the selected font does not have OpenType tables defined for the particular script

Version 1.453.3665.0 has a bug that may cause any application that relies on it to crash if an attempt is made to display any character in the Lao script range.

Version 1.460.3707.0 has a bug that may cause any application that relies on it to crash if an attempt is made to display a sequence of 16 or more consecutive Tibetan letters without a break (i.e. a space, tsheg or shad).

Some early versions of Uniscribe may crash when an attempt is made to display Arabic text with the "Arial Unicode MS" font.

Early versions of Uniscribe have a bug that causes it to return to BabelPad the wrong character position and screen point of Unicode characters outside of the Basic Multilingual Plane when in Right-To-Left (RTL) mode. This means that you may be unable to click on or select text composed of characters from Unicode Planes 1-16 when in RTL layout mode.

[oc_dt]

I recalled that I intended to try Babelpad before; however, I couldn't locate the 98 version from the official website. Therefore, I gave up.

Should I switch to kompozer when nvu was abandoned? What's your comments?

Btw, the Firefox source editor is not bad at all, it supports both Unicode and IME nicely. Are there any chance that I can invoke the editor alone? There is only one exe under the Firefox directory.

Edited December 15, 2008 by oc_dt

[BenoitRen]

As I said above, Kompozer = nVU + a bunch of patches that fix bugs, so I don't see why not.

[modicr]

Hello!

I recalled that I intended to try Babelpad before; however, I couldn't locate the 98 version from the official website. Therefore, I gave up.

Hmm, let me check ...

Indeed, author (Andrew West) removed the link.

On my disk I have an old file called BabelPad9X.zip with BabelPad.exe dated 2005-JAN-19 (version 1.6.5).

Fortunately our powerful friend archive.org can help us:

http://web.archive.org/web/20070613120235/.../BabelPad9X.zip

This is version 1.9.3 with datestamp 2006-APR-04

BTW, here are two interesting links:

http://groups.msn.com/MicrosoftVOLTusersco...y/homepage.msnw

http://scripts.sil.org/cms/scripts/page.ph...iscribeVersions

HTH, Roman

Edited December 16, 2008 by modicr

[oc_dt]

Got a prompt reply from the author declining my request to show the link for Win98 build:

Re: Babelpad 98 build‏

From: Andrew West (babelstone@gmail.com)

Sent: Wednesday, December 17, 2008 9:35:43 PM

I'm afraid that Windows 98 is no longer supported by BabelPad.

Best Regards,

Andrew

Also, I tried MadEdit which also doesn't support Global IME.

I'll keep using KompoZer until the birth of a smaller Composer from the SeaMonkey project. Apart from its large size, I'm quite happy with KompoZer.

Edited December 17, 2008 by oc_dt

[oc_dt]

The author of Babelpad agreed to post the last version for Win 98 in the webpage. Looking forward to that.

Re: Babelpad 98 build

From: Andrew West (babelstone@gmail.com)

Sent: Friday, December 19, 2008 6:52:05 AM

I'll try to do that this weekend.

Andrew

Edited December 19, 2008 by oc_dt

[modicr]

Hello!

The author of Babelpad agreed to post the last version for Win 98 in the webpage. Looking forward to that.

The download (BabelPad_193_9X.zip) is available on the http://www.babelstone.co.uk/Software/BabelPad.html

BTW, has anyone tried the newest BabelPad 5.2.0.7 with KernelEx ?

Cheers, Roman