The ‘Trade Match’ pilot

A WESTERN Australian Depart

ment of Commerce and Trade

managed pilot aimed at linking

regional Asia-Pacific Chambers of

Commerce recently announced by

department supremo Bruce Sutherland may bypass many regional chambers.

Aimed at eventually providing a live link between the databases of Chambers of Commerce in the Asia Pacific Region the WA pilot stage will see the databases from six Asian Chambers repackaged on CD-ROM for use by commerce and industry across the region.

In his Hanoi press release Mr Sutherland said the region was experi encing economic growth at a faster rate than world average. The results of a recently conducted study showed chambers processed around one million trade enquiries a month or around 100 per working day minute.

The recent 18 members Conference of Asia Pacific Chambers, of Commerce and Industry held in Hanoi gave the go-ahead for the pilot project. Pacific involvement only encompasses Australia, New Zealand and PNG. No other regional Pacific Chambers will be involved in the “Trade- Match” pilot. Given the very high reliance of regional economies on Tourism and export of primary products and the potential for market and investment opportunity such up to-date information can provide it seems this time regional Pacific Chambers of Commerce have missed the boat.

Now that President Clinton has given his public support to Prime Minister Paul Keating’s proposed regional Asia- Pacific trade alliance small economics will need to be fast off the mark and positioned with as much information as they can lay their hands on. Trade Match is industry talking to

industry.

With the GATT round seemingly nearing its culmination, albeit with France being dragged reluctantly to the table.

Europe with the UK are now having agreed to Maastricht, an even closer union, however a union with a defunct common currency policy, NAFTA maybe in for a rough trip with a new government in Canada and the Cairns group gnashing its collective teeth there appears to be no middle road for the Pacific.

Economies will need to pragmatically evaluate where their markets and futures lie. The 18 member Asia-Pacific Chambers of Commerce Group (if one excludes China) represents around 50 per cent of the worlds consumers. Trade Match offers a cost effective market tool and means to access this market. □

Perfecting Word Perfect

THE most popular software in the world, for those who use

computers as souped-up typewriters, is Word Perfect.

Those writing about the South Pacific on Word Perfect, however, find it unfriendly. This is because if you type “Pago Pago” or “Mali Mali” or “Dora Dora” in Word Perfect and then check the spelling in your document (a nice feature, generally), Word Perfect sends you an error mess age “Double Word,” it says. Then the writer has a choice either disable (kill) the double word check ing mechanism, which is a disadvan tage, or tell the machine to skip the double word in question.

A typist writing about American Samoa may have to use Pago Pago several times on a page, and it is a nuisance to have to convince the machine, each time, that the writer is

right and the machine is wrong about what it thinks is an error.

This is the kind of problem that should be readily fixable, if the software manufacturer feels it is worth the time and money. PlM’s Washington correspondent, David North, called Word Perfect and wrote to the firm but to no avail. The problem was too obscure, apparently, for them to bother with. Since he first wrote to them, a couple of years ago, a new version of Word Perfect has appeared called 6.0, and the problem remains as before.

What PlM’s man initially failed to do was to consult his own wife, Ruth Blau, who was then in the software business for another firm. She subsequently solved the problem by using an obscure part of the software that was apparently unknown even to the Word Perfect Technicians.

So, if you are writing about American Samoa in Word Perfect and want to mention “Pago Pago” without being zapped by the machine during a spell check, this is what you do first type “Pago”, then touch and release the Home key, then hit the space bar, and then type “Pago” jagain.jlnlthejargonjof Word Perfect you have just inserted a “hard space” in the middle of the words. But, “Pago Pago” even the first part of it, will stump the spell check the first time it appears; so when the machine questions the spelling you press 3 (“add”) to tell the machine, for future reference, that this is an acceptable word.

Having to insert a hard space each time, however, is a bit of a nuisance. If you are going to type a double word several times a day, Ruth Blau suggests that you create a “macro” for it. This is a system by which one creates a little bit of computer programming; after doing this one subsequently touches a couple of keys and “Pago Pago”, complete with hard space in between, appears in your text. The spell check mechanism will accept it every time. One could instead, in violation of current usage, simply make Pago Pago or Bora Bora one word, but that would be cheating. □