Apologies for cross-posting

Dear all,

There exists a small, largely international community of Apple computer users in Viet Nam. Overseas, Apple computers are more common but they have been relegated in status because some Vietnamese fonts cannot be used in systems running Macintosh operating system.

This community is not well-connected and has not so far shared information about their system and services.

The coincidence of the movement to Unicode for Vietnamsese language and the emergence of a mature, Unicode complient, new operating system with MACOS X.2 (Jaguar) suggests expanded possibilities for Apple products in a Vietnamese context. MACOSX comes from the factory with a Vietnamese keyboard driver and software capable of writing Vietnamese in Unicode. The potential value of this new system is not well-known to current users, many of whom still prefer OS9.

Given the progressive improvement in MACOS system software even in the last few months, the lack of documentation and in particular, the lack of information relevant to South East Asian languages, strongly suggest we network better among ourselves.

Apple has also emerged as a contender in Unix-based and Open Source software which potentially broaden the audience beyond Apple product users.

PC emulation also presents issues.

For these reasons, I would like to start an international network of Apple Macintosh OS users based on an email discussion group, MACOS-VN. If you are interested in joining this network, please contact me. I would like to launch this list in the next week.

This will not be in any way a commercial list.

Vern