6 ms·

Since you’re here, can you explain what’s special about the Hancom/Hangul office software? The Wikipedia articles all just say things like “specialized support

by boulos 7y ago

Since you’re here, can you explain what’s special about the Hancom/Hangul office software? The Wikipedia articles all just say things like “specialized support” or “special needs”. I would have assumed that the key requirement is Hangul input, which presumably other word processing and spreadsheet programs could do just fine.

pcr910303 7y ago
> I would have assumed that the key requirement is Hangul input, which presumably other word processing and spreadsheet programs could do just fine. Hangul support was a key feature in the 80s where everything was MS-DOS; and it wasn’t prevalent then where a lot of hangul-supporting word processors were on the market. The killer feature of the Hangul Word Processor to most users is that it allows substantial control on the layout of the document... in a way that westerners don’t really care. (That’s a direct quote from a foreigner I know, maybe an over-generalization.) So the Korean Government and a lot of corporations were very committed on transitioning documents that were written by hand, to computers, and they also wanted to have this exact layout and form that was used before. Most forms are based out of tables — and I can’t really explain this in text, but it gives you the power to layout the text the exact way you want, while in Word, you feel like you’re wrestling with the layout engine. (Kinda like... if Word is old CSS where you had to use all kinds of float hacks to make your fragile layout, HWP gives you flexbox and grids... etc....) Some says that HWP is more like a DTD program like InDesign (I’ve never used it so I can’t really comment) rather than a usual word processor that other countries use... but everybody is just super used to having all that control, so nobody can really transition back to Word.
- boulos 7y ago
  Interesting! I’m curious why people never moved to say Quark XPress then, but presumably it was “Hancom makes us this super custom thing, and it’s way cheaper than any desktop publishing software”. Is there a lot of diversity in the types of documents people make? (Like, why isn’t this a case of having lots of templates?)
  - hrktb 7y ago
    I get the feeling that a viable program produced locally was in itself a user feature. While other global programs could be shoehorned into their use case, it still means poor customizability for specific Korean issues. In particular being optimized for the most common Korean use case vs western designers use cases. There’s a lot of these local brew word processor in the CJK world, and it’s often more than just language support: there will be hooks for common legal formatting, better handling of common transformations, sometimes a dedicated IME working better for long form writing. It also means more culturally useful templates from first party source, which is surprisingly nice to have IMO. It’s also interesting that local companies/gov. can pay for additional features or adaptations, have the talent move to other entities in the local economy, etc. which is a way higher hurdle for an Adobe or Microsoft.
  - pcr910303 7y ago
    > I’m curious why people never moved to say Quark XPress then, but presumably it was “Hancom makes us this super custom thing, and it’s way cheaper than any desktop publishing software”. First of all, QuarkXPress had shitty, really shitty language support. You might be surprised when you know that most pro apps have really, really poor CJK support — apps like Photoshop currently has really hacky input support bolted on later, and frequently a problem. Even big, user facing apps like Microsoft Excel still has lots of problems with input. So back in the days where the word processor market was more diverse, QuarkXPress was not an option. Then also, there is the popularity problem where people have not used or even heard about DTD software like this, and it’s not really a friendly interface for users to create and modify documents. This is a side story but... publishers that needed DTD software used QuarkXPress back in the day. The company backing the software had frequent conflicts with the local publishers with license pricing, and the publishers decided to protest by not upgrading to the latest version — and AFAIK lots of small publishers that didn’t have the manpower to convert all of it’s files to InDesign still buys used PowerMacs to run the version(I’m not sure but something like 3.3 — released in 1996!) that they use. > Is there a lot of diversity in the types of documents people make? (Like, why isn’t this a case of having lots of templates?) > presumably it was “Hancom makes us this super custom thing, and it’s way cheaper than any desktop publishing software”. Yeah, pretty much true too. Having lots of templates in HWP is one of the reason why HWP isn’t disappearing; there is vendor lock-in due to custom file formats, and people don’t feel any reason to move to another one.
- dmix 7y ago
  > while in Word, you feel like you’re wrestling with the layout engine. That's an understatement, the UX for that in Word is pretty awful without some deep familiarity. Even using tables to format stuff was difficult and choppy. Although I've never had to use Word professionally and fortunately most of my education just required the standard format + some spacing requirements, which were easy.
- kalleboo 7y ago
  > The killer feature of the Hangul Word Processor to most users is that it allows substantial control on the layout of the document... in a way that westerners don’t really care There's a similar tendency in Japan to use MS Excel for a lot of documents that westerners would use MS Word for for the same reason - detailed, rigid, layout.

by boulos 7y ago

pcr910303 7y ago

> I would have assumed that the key requirement is Hangul input, which presumably other word processing and spreadsheet programs could do just fine. Hangul support was a key feature in the 80s where everything was MS-DOS; and it wasn’t prevalent then where a lot of hangul-supporting word processors were on the market. The killer feature of the Hangul Word Processor to most users is that it allows substantial control on the layout of the document... in a way that westerners don’t really care. (That’s a direct quote from a foreigner I know, maybe an over-generalization.) So the Korean Government and a lot of corporations were very committed on transitioning documents that were written by hand, to computers, and they also wanted to have this exact layout and form that was used before. Most forms are based out of tables — and I can’t really explain this in text, but it gives you the power to layout the text the exact way you want, while in Word, you feel like you’re wrestling with the layout engine. (Kinda like... if Word is old CSS where you had to use all kinds of float hacks to make your fragile layout, HWP gives you flexbox and grids... etc....) Some says that HWP is more like a DTD program like InDesign (I’ve never used it so I can’t really comment) rather than a usual word processor that other countries use... but everybody is just super used to having all that control, so nobody can really transition back to Word.

boulos 7y ago
Interesting! I’m curious why people never moved to say Quark XPress then, but presumably it was “Hancom makes us this super custom thing, and it’s way cheaper than any desktop publishing software”. Is there a lot of diversity in the types of documents people make? (Like, why isn’t this a case of having lots of templates?)
- hrktb 7y ago
  I get the feeling that a viable program produced locally was in itself a user feature. While other global programs could be shoehorned into their use case, it still means poor customizability for specific Korean issues. In particular being optimized for the most common Korean use case vs western designers use cases. There’s a lot of these local brew word processor in the CJK world, and it’s often more than just language support: there will be hooks for common legal formatting, better handling of common transformations, sometimes a dedicated IME working better for long form writing. It also means more culturally useful templates from first party source, which is surprisingly nice to have IMO. It’s also interesting that local companies/gov. can pay for additional features or adaptations, have the talent move to other entities in the local economy, etc. which is a way higher hurdle for an Adobe or Microsoft.
- pcr910303 7y ago
  > I’m curious why people never moved to say Quark XPress then, but presumably it was “Hancom makes us this super custom thing, and it’s way cheaper than any desktop publishing software”. First of all, QuarkXPress had shitty, really shitty language support. You might be surprised when you know that most pro apps have really, really poor CJK support — apps like Photoshop currently has really hacky input support bolted on later, and frequently a problem. Even big, user facing apps like Microsoft Excel still has lots of problems with input. So back in the days where the word processor market was more diverse, QuarkXPress was not an option. Then also, there is the popularity problem where people have not used or even heard about DTD software like this, and it’s not really a friendly interface for users to create and modify documents. This is a side story but... publishers that needed DTD software used QuarkXPress back in the day. The company backing the software had frequent conflicts with the local publishers with license pricing, and the publishers decided to protest by not upgrading to the latest version — and AFAIK lots of small publishers that didn’t have the manpower to convert all of it’s files to InDesign still buys used PowerMacs to run the version(I’m not sure but something like 3.3 — released in 1996!) that they use. > Is there a lot of diversity in the types of documents people make? (Like, why isn’t this a case of having lots of templates?) > presumably it was “Hancom makes us this super custom thing, and it’s way cheaper than any desktop publishing software”. Yeah, pretty much true too. Having lots of templates in HWP is one of the reason why HWP isn’t disappearing; there is vendor lock-in due to custom file formats, and people don’t feel any reason to move to another one.
dmix 7y ago
> while in Word, you feel like you’re wrestling with the layout engine. That's an understatement, the UX for that in Word is pretty awful without some deep familiarity. Even using tables to format stuff was difficult and choppy. Although I've never had to use Word professionally and fortunately most of my education just required the standard format + some spacing requirements, which were easy.
kalleboo 7y ago
> The killer feature of the Hangul Word Processor to most users is that it allows substantial control on the layout of the document... in a way that westerners don’t really care There's a similar tendency in Japan to use MS Excel for a lot of documents that westerners would use MS Word for for the same reason - detailed, rigid, layout.