Hi, all, I will publish a RFE issue for supporting functions of Hagaki (postcards in Japan), but I want to know circumstances of postcards around the world in advance. I don't know how postcards are used in each country.
About 10 billion postcards are sent a year in Japan. Are more postcards sent in your country? Japanese mainly use them for New Year's Greeting. 3 billion are used for this purpose. For what do you send postcards in your country? The size of Official Postcard in Japan is 100*148mm. Zip codes in Japan are composed by 3 digits, a hyphen and 4 digits. Is it different from yours? In your country, OOo is not required to implement supporting functions to write postcards, is it? I've written an article to let you know how postcards works in my country. It is attached in the end of this mail. Please have a look. Regards, -- Japanese Native-Language Project Takashi Nakamoto <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> ===== Hagaki (Postcard in Japan) ===== The main purpose of this article is to let you know what is Hagaki and how important is supporting Hagaki dimensions and some functions related to Hagaki for OOo. * How Hagaki works A Hagaki is just a postcard in Japan. The benefit of sending Hagaki is that we can reduce postage costs. The postage costs of Hagaki is more inexpensive than any other transportation means. Just 50 yens. Japanese use Hagaki mainly for New Year's Greeting, which is called Nengajo. Japan has a custom to send Nengajo to relatives, friends, old friends, colleagues, teachers, former teachers and customers. We also use Hagaki for Summer greetings and exchanging the latest news about ourselves. Not only for private business, but many companies send Hagaki in place of flyers to reduce advertising costs. Sending Hagaki is more inexpensive than distributing flyers. Goverments and other institutions also send Hagaki instead of bills, notice of test scores and so on. Those Hagaki are covered by special paper to hide secrets. So they don't need to put such private informaiton in envelopes and can reduce postage costs. * Statistics in 2005 - Sent Hagaki: 7,307,107,000 (excluded Nengajo) - Sent Nengajo: 3,217,130,000 * Normal Hagaki and Return Hagaki There is two types of Hagaki, one is Normal Hagaki and another is Return Hagaki. If not otherwise specified, Japanese call Hagaki as Normal Hagaki. A Return Hagaki has double width of a Normal Hagaki attaching replying part. Receivers can detach replying part from Return Hagaki. Then they reply with detached part without postage costs because senders pay double costs. The main purpose of Return Hagaki is for invitation to ceremonial functions such as a marriage ceremony, a reception, an alumni association and a party. In general, senders print entry forms on replying part and receivers can just reply with yes or no. * Zip codes in Japan 7 digits to specify a prefecture, a city and a town. A zip code had been 3 or 5 digits until 1998. Under the influence of the old zip code, 7 digits are composed by 3 digits, a hyphen and 4 digits. The new zip codes were aimed to reduce human resources of Post Office. Collected Hagaki are ordered by machine according to zip codes. Not only that, the user of Hagaki can depend on computer resources. When we add a new address to an address list, we don't have to input a prefecture, a city and a town each time. Only 7 digits are required. * Dimensions Japan Post Office issues Official Hagaki. The primary feature of Official Hagaki is that postage stamps are attached at the time of issuing. Official Hagaki are mainly used for Nengajo. The dimension of Official Hagaki is defined strictly: 100 * 148mm (200 * 148mm for Return Hagaki). Unofficial Hagaki is also accepted. The size of them has ranges to some extend. The width is 90 - 107mm (180 - 214mm for Return Hagaki) and the height is 140 - 154mm. * Software market As you can see above statistics, many Hagaki are sent in Japan. Japanese used to write address and message in handwriting piece by piece until personal computers become common. But now, we often print address by printers. Any printer, printer driver and DTP software supports dimensions of Official Hagaki in Japan. We take supporting Official Hagaki for granted. And we need software to print address for Hagaki. Such software has following functions: - managing address book - complementing address by entering zip code - auto formatting - printing plural address in turn - illustrations - fonts Especially on season for writing Nangajo, those softwares are advertised extensively. Computer shops set out those packages in a prominent place, book stores set out more instruction manuals and related books or mooks for those softwares than usual and software magazines and information web sites pick up them. The competitive Office software, MS Word, also support Hagaki Wizard. (This function may be only for Japanese Edition.) * Requirement for OOo - supporting Hagaki dimensions - Hagaki wizard (auto formatting and printing plural address in turn) - complementing address function for Base Illustrations and fonts are not required for OOo. We can get fonts and illustrations by other means. I don't tell you about the detail of the requirement on this article, but I'll write a specification for those functions if marketing team accepts that OOo implement such functions. * Future Prospects Supporting Hagaki dimensions and related functions make OOo more useful for existing users. More software magazines and information web sites may get to pick up and admire OOo. OOo may become well-known and many people become new users of OOo. * Reference - Category of Hagaki (explaining specification of Hagaki in Japanese) http://www.gem.hi-ho.ne.jp/sayopee/post/intro4.html - Statistics of JAPAN POST http://www.zaimu.japanpost.jp/tokei/index.html (Japanese) http://www.zaimu.japanpost.jp/tokei/index-e.html (English, but incomplete) --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
