The program for TRONSHOW 2000 and the 16th TRON Project International Symposium, which will take place in the second basement floor at the Tokyo Design Center next to the JR Gotanda Station in Tokyo, has been announced by the TRON Association. The events will be held between 10 a.m. and 5 p.m. from Thursday, December 2, 1999, through Saturday, December 4, 1999. In addition, TRON Electronics Symposium 2000 (TEPS 2000), also known as the EnableWare symposium, will be held at the same location from 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. on Saturday, December 4, 1999.
Tokyo Design Center is a three minute walk from the East Exit of JR Gotanda Station. The address of the Tokyo Design Center is 5-25-1 Higashi Gotanda, Shinagawa-ku, Tokyo. For a map of the JR Gotanda Station area, click here.
The symposium and theater schedule for TRONSHOW 2000 is as follows:
10:30 a.m. to 11:30 a.m.
11:30 a.m. to 12:00 p.m.
1:00 p.m. to 3:00 p.m.
3:00 p.m. to 3:30 p.m.
3:30 p.m. to 4:00 p.m.
4:00 p.m. to 4:30 p.m.
4:30 p.m. to 5:00 p.m.
5:00 p.m. to 5:30 p.m.
10:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m.
1:00 p.m. to 2:30 p.m.
2:30 p.m. to 3:00 p.m.
3:00 p.m. to 3:30 p.m.
3:30 p.m. to 4:00 p.m.
4:00 p.m. to 4:30 p.m.
4:30 p.m. to 5:00 p.m.
5:00 p.m. to 5:30 p.m.
10:00 a.m. to 11:00 a.m.
11:00 a.m. to 11:30 p.m.
11:30 a.m. to 12:00 p.m.
TRON Electronics Prosthetics Symposium 2000 (TEPS 2000), which is also referred to as the TRON EnableWare symposium, will take up the theme of "EnableWare Design for Information Devices." There will be an invited lecture by Dr. John Gill of the Royal National Institute for the Blind titled, "Aiming at a Comprehensive Design that Can Be Used by Anyone."
1:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m.
The companies that will being exhibiting their TRON-based and/or TRON-related technologies at TRONSHOW 2000 are as follows:
The exhibits of the above listed companies can be viewed from between 10:00 a.m. and 5:00 p.m. from Thursday, December 2 through Saturday, December 4.
Personal Media Corporation began marketing a new version of its 32-bit BTRON3-specification operating system with "true multilingual capability" on Friday, November 12, 1999. The new B-right/V Release 2 operating system, which the company calls Cho-Kanji (Ultra Kanji), is being sold without a manufacturer's recommended price. However, it is expected to retail at approximately 10,000 yen at retail outlets in electronics districts throughout Japan. In addition, Personal Media is offering it through direct sales for a price of 15,000 yen, consumption not included.
Unlike the earlier version of B-right/V, which was based on a single character plane that could contain a maximum of 48,400 characters, the new version of B-right/V is based on multiple character planes and language specifier codes, which enable it to process more characters than any other operating system developed to date. This forte of B-right/V is being applied to Japanese in particular, and as a result, the new operating system is able to process an "unabridged Japanese character set" that includes every known character ever created for writing the Japanese language. Since B-right/V is the ultimate kanji (Chinese character) processing operating system, Personal Media refers to the product using the nickname "Ultra Kanji."
The specification for Ultra Kanji is as follows:
Operating system
Bundled applications
Character sets and fonts
| JIS levels 1 and 2 (JIS X 0208) |
6,879 |
Mincho, Gothic, Maru Gothic, Textbook (4 fonts) |
| JIS Auxiliary Kanji (JIS X 0212) |
6,067 |
Mincho, Gothic (2 fonts) |
| Korean (KS X 1001) |
8,224 |
Mincho, Gothic, Maru Gothic, etc. (6 fonts) |
| Chinese Simplified (GB 2312) |
7,445 |
Mincho, Gothic, etc. (4 fonts) |
| Chinese Traditional (CNS 11643) |
13,735 |
Mincho, Gothic (2 fonts) |
| 6-point, 8-point Braille |
320 |
Mincho |
| Listed in Konjaku Mojikyou |
|
|
| Dai Kan-Wa Jiten listed |
50,225 |
Mincho |
| Dai Kan-Wa Jiten unlisted |
15,017 |
Mincho |
| Character elements |
4,335 |
Mincho |
| Anomalous cursive syllabary |
225 |
Mincho |
| Chu Nôm (Vietnamese Chinese characters) |
2,642 |
Mincho |
| Additional symbols, alphanumerics, water writing |
1,404 |
Mincho |
| Chinese bone-and-shell script |
3,401 |
Mincho |
| Brahma letters |
1,745 |
Mincho |
| Listed in Unicode 2.0 |
|
|
| IPA phonetic symbols |
89 |
Mincho, Gothic (2 fonts) |
| Latin script |
778 |
Mincho, Gothic (2 fonts) |
| Arabic script |
927 |
Mincho |
| Various other national scripts [1] |
1,837 |
Mincho |
| Symbols for kana-kambun |
200 |
Mincho, Gothic (2 fonts) |
| Other symbols and hangul jamos |
2,680 |
Mincho |
| Total |
128,175 |
Package Contents
B-right/V R2 in BTRON History
B-right/V R2 is neither the first implementation of the BTRON-specification operating system nor the first 32-bit implementation for IBM-PC/AT compatibles. As can be seen in the chart of BTRON-specification operating system commercializations below, the first commercialization appeared in 1990 for TRONCHIP-based hardware. That was followed by a series of commercializations for 16-bit Intel-based platforms. The first of these 16-bit commercializations was for a specialized, i.e., non-standard, MS-DOS-based laptop architecture developed by Matsushita, but the others were for IBM-PC/AT compatibles, which are referred to as "DOS/V" computers in Japan.
Since it was never commercialized, the BTRON3-specification 3B operating system is not shown below in the chart, but that operating system with its modern microkernel architecture is direct ancestor of B-right/V R2. As was the case with the 2B operating system, 3B was developed for TRONCHIP-based hardware, but it was ultimately commercialized as "B-right" for Seiko Instrument Inc.'s BrainPad TiPO personal digital assistant (PDA). B-right is officially based on the micro-BTRON Specification, which is very close to the BTRON3 Specification. The second commercialization of 3B technology was B-right/V, which at one time was called "3B/V" by Personal Media, for IBM-PC/AT compatibles.
There has been a decade of commercializations of BTRON-specification operating systems, so it should be obvious to potential buyers--as well as diehard TRON Project critics!--that the BTRON-specification operating system is here to stay. Moreover, since it now has technology that other operating systems lack, in particular superb multilingual processing, the BTRON-specification operating system is on track to take its rightful place in the world of alternative operating systems. Alternative operating systems, such as GNU/Linux and BTRON, have been drawing considerable interest worldwide as a result of dissatisfaction and disenchantment with the offerings of leading personal computer operating system vendors.
| 16-bit Intel MPUs | 32-bit TRONCHIP | 32-bit IBM-PC/AT Compatibles | 32-bit NEC (V810) MPU | |
| 1990 | 2B (so-called "pure BTRON" running on Gmicro series MPUs) | |||
| 1991 | 1B/Note (Matsushita laptop; not IBM-PC/AT compatible) | |||
| 1994 | 1B/V1 (IBM-PC/AT compatibles) | |||
| 1995 | 1B/V2 (IBM-PC/AT compatibles) | |||
| 1996 | 1B/V3 (IBM-PC/AT compatibles) | |||
| 1997 | B-right (micro-BTRON for BrainPad TiPO PDA) | |||
| 1998 | B-right/V (multilingual system based on a single character plane) | |||
| 1999 | B-right/V R2 ("Ultra Kanji" with true BTRON multilingual system) |