Rashumon Explained

Rashumon
Author:	HarmonySoft
Latest Release Version:	"student" version
Operating System:	Amiga OS
Platform:	Amiga
Genre:	Word processor
Website:	http://www.rashumon.com/

Rashumon was a multilingual graphical word processor developed for the Amiga computer by an Israel-based company called HarmonySoft (founded by Michael Haephrati in 1989)^[1] and was sold until after the demise of Commodore in 1994 (a lower-priced "student" version was released in 1995^[2]).^[3] Rashumon had particular support for Hebrew, Arabic^{[4] [5]} and Russian as well as English, and it could send its text to speech synthesis in English.^[6]

Rashumon was the only word processor for the Amiga having the ability to create and edit multilingual documents.^{[7] [8]} Rashumon printed using Type 1 PostScript fonts^[9] and it also supported Intellifont.^[10]

Name

Rashumon was named after a Japanese movie which had four different characters giving different versions of the same event. Amiga User International commented that this name seemed appropriate for a wordprocessor designed to support multiple languages.^[11]

Notable features

• Discontinuous selections: the user can select multiple parts of the text – even if these parts are separated from each other – and perform clipboard manipulations on them (e.g. selecting the first paragraph and the last paragraph of a document at the same time, and copying both of them to the clipboard).^[12]
• A Table generator, allowing the creation and editing of tables.
• Multiple key map support, up to 5 simultaneously, allowing for the use of multiple languages simultaneously.
• Search and replace including color, style and font filters. For example, end users could search for the word "Apple" only in green (ignoring this word in other colors) and replace each occurrence with the word "Banana" in yellow.
• Multilingual string gadgets (the Amiga equivalent to text boxes) for creating and renaming files, drawers, etc.
• Import and export multilingual ASCII files to and from PC and Macintosh.^[13]
• Fast screen updating and scrolling.
• Interchange File Format (IFF) graphics support (import and export).
• Direct access to 255 characters of each font, similar to inserting "symbols" or "special characters" in modern wordprocessors.

External links

• Rashumon versions at Aminet.net
• Rashumon's web site

Notes and References

1. Web site: Rashumon . amigafuture.de . 2016-07-27.
2. News: May 2, 1995 . Rashumon - new student's version . 3 . Amiga Report International Online Magazine . 2 .
3. Web site: Rashumon . 2023-05-19 . www.rashumon.com.
4. Web site: Multilingual Wordprocessing Systems . africa.upenn.edu . University of Pennsylvania - African Studies Center. 2016-07-27 .
5. Michael Haephrati. Amiga software that support Arabic . 1993-07-08 . soc.culture.arabic . [e-mail]. now supports Arabic. Mr. John Hajjer of L.C.P.S. worked on the new set of Arabic, Syriac and Fersi fonts and keymaps.. 2016-07-27.
6. http://michaelhaephrati.wordpress.com/2010/11/09/rashumon-word-processor-yedioth-1991/ A news article
7. News: April 1993 . Write with a twist . 12 . Amiga World..
8. News: Duarte . Timothy . September 1992 . New Products & Other Neat Stuff, Rashumon 1.2D . 10 . Amazing Computing.
9. News: Callegari . Luigi . June 1994 . Rashumon v2.3 . Italian . 12 . Enigma Amiga Run . 54.
10. 22 September 1994. A compilation of new hardwares and softwares for the Amiga. AmyNews. 3. 2016-07-27.
11. http://michaelhaephrati.files.wordpress.com/2010/02/rashumon-article-uk.jpg Article about Rashumon at Amiga User International (UK)
12. News: Harari . Sams . November 1991 . Rashumon – a word processor that speaks for itself . Hebrew . 8 . 32 Bit.
13. News: Amiga my friend. Tal Shachaf . Maariv. November 1991. 13 September 2013.