Multilingual publishing before it became ordinary.
Rashumon was developed by HarmonySoft, the company Michael Haephrati founded in Israel in 1989. It was created for the Commodore Amiga and sold commercially through and beyond Commodore's closure in 1994; a lower-priced student edition followed in 1995.
At a time when most personal-computer software assumed one alphabet and one writing direction, Rashumon brought Hebrew, Arabic, Russian, English, and other languages into the same graphical document. It was the only Amiga word processor identified in contemporary coverage as capable of creating and editing multilingual documents.
The name came from Akira Kurosawa's film Rashomon, in which several people offer different versions of one event. Amiga User International observed that the idea suited a word processor designed to express the same world through many languages.
1989
HarmonySoft founded
Rashumon's first commercial release for the Commodore Amiga.
A lower-cost version extended the product's life after Commodore's demise.
Today
Preserved history
Original disks, manuals, screens, print samples, and press material document the work.
03 / What it could do
Notable capabilities
More than multilingual typing.
Rashumon combined word processing, page composition, cross-platform exchange, and Amiga-native graphics in one unusually ambitious system.
01
Five simultaneous keymaps
Switch among multiple languages in the same working session and compose them inside one document.
02
Bidirectional editing
Edit left-to-right and right-to-left text using a dedicated ruler designed for mixed-direction documents.
03
Discontinuous selection
Select separate passages at the same time, then copy, move, style, or delete them as one operation.
04
Filtered search and replace
Search by text, color, type style, and font - then replace both content and formatting selectively.
05
Integrated table generator
Create and edit structured tables from within the word-processing environment.
06
Professional font output
Print with Adobe Type 1 PostScript fonts and later Intellifont support.
07
Cross-platform exchange
Import and export multilingual ASCII files for Amiga, PC, and Macintosh workflows.
08
Graphics and speech
Import and export IFF graphics and send English text to the Amiga speech synthesizer.
An original print sample produced with Rashumon 3.00, circa 1991-1994.
04 / The printed page
What you saw could become what you printed
Typography, tables, color, and graphics together.
The surviving sample demonstrates proportional Hebrew type, colored headlines, a ruled table, multiple alignments, an imported map, and mixed typographic emphasis on a single page. Rashumon supported Type 1 PostScript fonts and later Intellifont, making professional output part of the design rather than an afterthought.
05 / The operating manual
Translated from the original Hebrew
A complete publishing environment.
The surviving Hebrew manuals describe a mature application with seven major areas. This English guide condenses their structure and terminology for an international audience.
01
Starting Rashumon
Launch from Workbench or the CLI, open a document directly, install to a hard drive, and prepare a startup disk.
02
Entering multilingual text
Choose keymaps, work in insert or overwrite mode, move the cursor, switch primary and secondary languages, and set font, color, and style.
03
Editing and layout
Select text blocks, use the clipboard, search and replace, align paragraphs, format pages, undo changes, work with the ruler, and generate tables.
04
Documents and files
Create, open, save, and organize documents; exchange multilingual ASCII; save pages as images; and combine text with graphics.
05
Printing
Configure the printer, print in text or graphics mode, add headers and footers, perform mail merge, print selected blocks, and preview pages.
06
The working environment
Customize startup settings, enable automatic saving, choose a color palette, control rulers, and change the screen presentation.
07
Advanced tools
Use the built-in clock and date, review technical information, replay keyboard macros, open a CLI window, and perform command-line operations.
06 / Authentic interface
Captured from the real software
Rashumon on the Amiga.
No reconstruction: these are original screens from preserved Rashumon versions and disks. Open each image in a new browser tab to inspect it at full size.
01
Multilingual composition
Hebrew text, color, proportional fonts, and page layout in Rashumon 1.2.
02
Search and replace
The dialog could filter searches by font, style, size, and color.
03
Font selection
A live font browser with the document visible behind it.
04
Table generator
Rashumon's integrated table commands inside the Amiga menu system.
05
Print configuration
Page size, orientation, scaling, density, and output controls.
06
Mac-compatible saving
A compatibility option for multilingual exchange with Macintosh systems.
07
Page preview
A complete printed page previewed before output.
08
Distribution disk
The original Amiga Workbench view of Rashumon 1.2 files and documents.
09
HarmonySoft credits
The Rashumon 1.35 startup screen and original HarmonySoft identity.
07 / Contemporary material
The original 1989 brochure
“A multilingual graphical word processor.”
The Hebrew launch brochure promoted proportional spacing, exceptionally fast scrolling, interactive operation, extensive color control, disk-resident dictionaries, reliable automatic saving, and a broad collection of editing and document-production tools.
Its dense feature list already included search and replace, headers and footers, date and time insertion, arithmetic inside a document, import and export, password protection, print merge, and dynamic information integrated with the word processor.
Original HarmonySoft brochure, 1989, digitally flattened and restored. Click to view the complete sheet.
08 / Legacy
Software designed for a world with more than one alphabet.
A preserved record of independent invention.
Rashumon's significance lies not only in supporting several languages, but in treating multilingual documents as a complete graphical and publishing problem: input, direction, layout, fonts, search, interchange, printing, and speech.
This archive brings together the original software screens, operating manuals, disk images, printed output, and contemporary material so that the project can be understood on its own terms.
Rashumon 3 is preserved on Aminet as a historical m68k-AmigaOS release. The archive is approximately 361 KB and is described as a multilingual graphical word processor.
