MEPS Questions

uwishufish

What is it?

Who started, designed it?

Who worked on it?

Where's it located?

Who owns the rights to it? If there is such a thing.

Brothers from Japan designed the system. The idea was conceived by Rheiner Ohm and another Bethelite. It is a piece of software, located anywhere that the software can be installed. Currently, except for usage rights held by the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society, Reader's Digest owns the technology. It was sold to Reader's Digest in the late 1990s (if memory serves correctly).

What it is is a technology that allows text to be typeset correctly in hundreds of different languages (character sets) within a single template. Very few companies have a demand for enough languages to warrant the purchase of such a system. Currently the MEPS system is all but obselete, anyway. The few dozen character sets that cannot be accomodated on popular software are not ones for which most publishers have markets.

Respectfully,
AuldSoul

Wasanelder Once

g91 5/22 p. 27 Preaching the Good News in Many Languages

In 1979 the Watchtower Society started what it called the MEPS project. MEPS is the acronym for "Multilanguage Electronic Phototypesetting System." Commercial companies were developing computers only for selected languages where there would be a profit on their investment. The Society’s commission is different. The Bible says that the good news is to be declared "to every nation and tribe and tongue and people."—Revelation 14:6.

Through many of the Society’s 93 branch offices in all parts of the earth, research into language characteristics was done. A list of all the characters and accents needed to print literature in the languages covered by each branch had to be produced. Also needed were the rules of word division for each language. Each character and accent had to be drawn, scanned into a computer, and edited. This involved years of dedicated work. The result is that the Kingdom message can now be printed in more languages than ever before, and the number keeps on increasing.

In the beginning the Society designed and built their own computer hardware and software. Jehovah’s Witnesses came from around the world to assist with this project. There was an interchange of skills as well as of encouragement. (Romans 1:12) It was somewhat like a reversal of what occurred at the Tower of Babel. After specialized training, the equipment, together with the skilled workers, was sent to branches around the world. The result is a versatile publishing system used in over a hundred lands and islands of the sea, well equipped to produce the Society’s publications in about 200 languages thus far.

Pretty much old news as Auldsoul stated.

W.Once