The product

LANGBOX-HEL is a product designed specifically to support the Greek alphabet. In addition to English, the Greek languages is supported with keyboard mapping, system messages, screen and display management, collating sequences, and date and time routine services.

LANGBOX-HEL is an extension to the UNIX operating system Kernel. A virtual driver or a STREAMS module is added to the kernel, processing on exceptional basis the Greek characters. A special shell and a variety of commands are added to complete the package.

LANGBOX-HEL will permit staff in your office to share and use existing UNIX applications in Greek with little or no adjustement. With LANGBOX's load and go transparency a user can obtain an English word processor, data base manager, spreadsheet or any 8-bit clean application and use it immediately - with no modification to the application - in Greek. He/She can even mix Greek and English characters and text within one document with a keystroke. Such bilingual power and elegance was never before possible under UNIX.

For the User

• Use the best existing "English-only" applications in Greek with no modification.
• Dynamically switch between Greek and English.
• Enter UNIX commands in Greek or English.
• Receive system messages in Greek or English.
• Dynamically select storage codeset.

For the Developer

• Develop Greek products and bilingual applications without bilingual programmers.
• Move existing "English-only" applications into the Greek world.
• Develop applications that meet the highest Greek standards.

For the Distributors and VARs

• Open new markets with new products/systems that meet local requirements.
• Expand your customer base with bilingual product offerings.

For the Manufacturers

• Enhance your total offering to the Greek market.
• Address international opportunities through our special cooperation program.

The following features are available on LANGBOX-HEL:

Bilingual keyboard : The keyboard mapping may be switched to English or Greek by a simple keystroke. Greek letters are indicated by keyboard stickers. The Tonos, Dialetica and Tonos-dialetica accents are available with dead keys.

Character codeset : The following character codesets are supported under LANGBOX-HEL:

• MDA Greek extension (PC AT and XT).
• ISO 8859-7
• IBM Codepage 851

LANGBOX-HEL Commands and Utilities

Two kinds of commands are added under the LANGBOX-HEL bilingual environment.

• The LANGBOX-HEL shell :

LANGBOX-HEL offers two specific shells allowing :

• The keyboard mapping.
• The setting of environment variable.
• The font management and the display processing depending on the language selected.

These shells are: ensh for English; hesh for Greek

• The bilingual LANGBOX-HEL and UNIX commands and utilities :

Those commands and utilities are the following :

• LANGBOX-HEL specific :

charset, hload, hloadp, fid, kbdcomp, kbdinit, hstty,
hdisp, hind, hxtract, hconvert, codeset, omapinit..

• Bilingual Unix command.

These commands return national (English or Greek) state or error messages depending on the shell selected.

Bilingual function libraries

• C library
• Internationalization library:

This new function library is specially added internationalization of applications and string extraction.

Terminal Emulation on all Unix Graphic User Interfaces based on X Window are supported. This includes Open Desktop of SCO xterm on X Window and Open Window of Sun, Suncmd and Suntool on SUNVIEW,...etc. The support of pure X Window/Motif application interface is available with the separate XLANGBOX-HEL package.

Ported to Interactive UNIX System V, SCO UNIX System V, SCO Xenix, IBM AIX PS/2, CDC EP/IX, Data General DG/UX, Silicon Graphics IRIX 5.3 (under the "GLM" name)

All equipment running any above mentioned version of UNIX. For display devices and terminals, support is available for: Wyse Model 60, HP 700/43, Dec VT320.

For printers, support is available for IBM proprinter II and III, EPSON LQ, and HP laserjet plus and Postscript

On PC's platform, the EGA (8x14) or VGA (9x16) modes are supported with the virtual screens.

All terminals and printers supporting one of the LANGBOX-HEL codesets or downloadable are supported.

LANGBOX-HEL consists of a core system supplied in binary machine readable format on floppies, DAT or QIC tapes and/or CDROM, together with documentation, and local keyboard stickers.