From: jidai@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu (Jihong Dai)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.china
Subject: soc.culture.china FAQ(2)--How To Read and Write In Chinese
Summary: This posting contains a list of frequently-asked-questions (and their answers) about the newsgroup "soc.culture.china". The second part covers the issue of how to read and write in Chinese on computer and is written by Jihong Cole-Dai < jidai@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu > , with assistance from Mark Swofford < mswofford@aardvark.ucs.uoknor.edu > .
Organization: The Ohio State university

Archive-name:cultures/china/how-to-read-and-write
Posting-Frequency: approximately biweekly
Last-modified: 1995/09/28


HOW TO READ AND WRITE IN CHINESE ON COMPUTER


Written by Jihong Cole-Dai < jidai@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu >

For comments and suggestions, please send your ideas to the author or to
scc-faq@saavik.cem.msu.edu

TABLE OF CONTENTS

  • (1) Can I use my computer to write and read in Chinese?
  • (2) How come you guys don't use Chinese here? Is there a place where I can read and post in Chinese?
  • (3) How does the Chinese language come alive in an American, or European, or whatever computer?
  • (4) What kind of things can be done in Chinese on computers?
  • (5) What special software and hardware do I need to do Chinese computing? Where can I find these things and how expensive are they?
  • (6) Can I communicate in Chinese with friends and others, like using email and reading and posting in Chinese in newsgroups?
  • (7) List of anonymous ftp and WWW sites

    How to Read and Write in Chinese on a Computer

    This part of the FAQ assumes that you have some basic knowledge of the computer, and are familiar with terms such as software, hardware, WINDOWS, on-line, input, applications, and the alike. It is not intended for the advanced practitioners of Chinese computing.

    (1) Can I use my computer to write and read in Chinese?

    Yes. Your computer can do that for you. In fact, if you have seen some postings and signatures in this group that look like messed-up sequences of letters, numbers, and symbols, chances are that they are encoded Chinese words. If you have the right tools in your hands, you will be able to read them and even write in Chinese yourself.

    To use Chinese in your computer applications (called "Chinese computing") you need some specialized knowledge and perhaps some help from experienced users. If you need more help than can be found here, you may request help from other netters. You may be surprised how many people are willing to offer advice and step-by-step help on things related to Chinese computing. Here in this FAQ, a brief introduction is given to Chinese computing. The purpose is to give you a taste of some of Chinese computing's basic ideas. If you want to read and post in Chinese, and/or seek answers to specific questions, you should check out the following newsgroups: chinese.comp.software, alt.chinese.computing, alt.chinese.text and alt.chinese.text.big5. The FAQs there will tell you what they are and exactly how to do the things you want to do.

    (2) How come you guys don't use Chinese here? Is there a place where I can read and post in Chinese?

    Well, this group, soc.culture.china, is used by people who read and write in ENGLISH. Maybe English is their preferred way to communicate with each other. Or maybe some of them don't have the right computer tools to read and write in Chinese. In any case, everyone here posts in English, even though for many of them Chinese may be their native language. Occasionally, someone posts something in encoded Chinese--but that probably is more by accident or mistake than by design.

    (3) How does the Chinese language come alive in an American, or European, or whatever computer?

    Roughly speaking, this is done by encoding and decoding the Chinese words in those ASCII symbols that are on your keyboard. Of course, you need some software tools to do the encoding and decoding. However, once you have them installed on your computer, the process of encoding and decoding will be (almost) invisible to you, so that you can use Chinese just as you use English on your computer.

    There are two popular schemes or systems to ecnode Chinese. The National Standard ("GuoBiao", or "GB" for short) system is used in mainland China. The GB system is also used widely in Singapore. The other system is called Big5; it is used in other places where the Chinese language is used frequently, such as Taiwan and Hong Kong. There are also slight variations of these two systems to make them suitable to certain computer applications. You might have heard of the "HZ" or HanZi system, which is a version of GB that is modified for use with the MS-DOS operating system.

    Recently, a new coding system called UNICODE has been created and is supposed to cover all kinds of languages and scripts. Some new Chinese groups have come to exist under UNICODE. These groups are under the chinese.*.unicode umbrella (for example: chinese.text.unicode).

    (4) What kind of things can be done in Chinese on computers?

    Well, first, because you are reading this part of the FAQ, you want to know if you can read and write in Chinese on your computer. And you already have the answer: YES. If you are familiar with Microsoft WINDOWS, you may be happy to know that there is a Chinese WINDOWS that runs just like the regular WINDOWS, except that all words on screen appear in Chinese.

    What about other things: programming? communications? Indeed, anything that is possible in English should also be possible in Chinese, since they are both just languages or tools. And because the Chinese words are encoded in the inner world of the computer, they are treated by the computer just like anything else--they can be manipulated, transmitted, etc. What is different is how they appear to you, the user who looks at the screen, and how you input (communicate) your commands to the computer.

    (5) What special software and hardware do I need to do Chinese computing? Where can I find these things and how expensive are they?

    As we said a little earlier, you need "tools" in order to do Chinese computing on your computer. When you got your computer, you probably didn't think about that and didn't try to get the right equipment, so the computer you are using is probably not equipped to do these things. But don't run out and buy a bunch of stuff, or give up on this because it may cost you megabucks. You probably don't need any new hardware and may only need to install certain software that can be very inexpensive.

    Again, we refer you the FAQs of Chinese text newsgroups for detailed description and instructions. The FAQs may be found at the following ftp sites.

    For alt.chinese.text:
    ftp.ifcss.org: pub/act/chinese-text-faq
    rtfm.mit.edu: pub/usenet/news.answers/chinese-text/faq
    ftp.uu.net: usenet/news.answers/chinese-text/faq.Z

    [Here is the Table of Contents for alt.chinese.text:

    For alt.chinese.text.big5:
    ftp.csie.nctu.edu.tw: /pub/Chinese/chinese-text/big5-faq.

    [Here are some of the questions included in the FAQ of alt.chinese.text.big5:

    Below we briefly summarize the basic information you might need to know about hardware and software in Chinese computing.

    **HARDWARE**

    Generally speaking, whether you have a PC or a Mac, you don't need any special hardware if your computer was made in the recent past (i.e. anytime later than the mid 1980's, thus PC's that are 386's or later and Macs that are SE or later meet the minimum hardware requirements), since these late-model computers usually come with an adequate amount of memory and the graphics capabilities necessary for Chinese computing. Actually, this level of computing power is needed only because all of the special software which you need require sufficient hardware on which to run. Making computers accept and display Chinese is basically a matter of storing a large dataset of previously entered Chinese characters and using the dataset when needed. The graphics card in your computer, together with the software, takes care of displaying the characters like small pictures.

    Some use unix/vax systems and work stations to do Chinese computing. In terms of hardware, these systems are generally more powerful than personal computers, so they won't need a hardware upgrade to do Chinese computing.

    **SOFTWARE**

    If you did not get you computer with Chinese computing in mind, you will need some new software for this purpose. As with software to do other computer tasks, many software brands and/or programs exist for Chinese computing. The different encoding/decoding systems make the choices even more numerous and confusing. Choosing among them will depend on what you would like to do with your choice. For example, if you would like to read the group alt.chinese.text, which uses the GB system, then you will only need to get the GB-based software. Another group, alt.chinese.text.big5, uses the Big5 coding scheme.

    To read and write in Chinese, you will need a Chinese editor or word processor that allows you to display Chinese and to use your keyboard to input Chinese. You may find quite a few of these Chinese word processors around, and more are coming into the market. Inputting Chinese using an English keyboard can take one of several ways. Netters from mainland China are probably familiar with the PinYin system. Other Chinese input systems include Chang-Jie, Zhu-Yin, and Big5. Most of the good Chinese editors or word processors can handle the different input and coding systems and convert documents between the different encoding formats.

    To read and write on line, you will need a Chinese operating system, such as Chinese WINDOWS. Again, there are a few of them and you need to choose which one to get.

    There are also utilities that handle Chinese files to do things like file converting, formatting and printing. A good word processor should include these utilities in the package.

    Where to get these software programs and how much do they cost? Surprisingly, many of these programs are easily available and relatively inexpensive. Some are even free of charge under certain conditions (shareware). If you know how to ftp, the following are several sites where the software programs are stored and can be obtained through anonymous ftp.

    ftp.ifcss.org: pub/software
    nctuccca.edu.tw: Chinese/ifcss/software
    cnd.org: pub/software

    You may find that some of the archived software programs are the simplest versions which lack some of the important features. That's because the authors of these programs, while eager to spread the word about their products, would like the users (customers) to pay for these products. After all, this is a marketplace. You may have to contact the author of a particular product, negotiate, and pay a fee for the better versions.

    Some software programs are for sale in the marketplace. To purchase Chinese software in the marketplace, you may have to find a vendor specializing in Chinese computing. While in Taiwan, mainland China, Hong Kong or Singapore this may be easy to do; in Australia, North America and Europe, it may be difficult to find such a vendor. Again, the information you obtain from the above ftp sites may tell you how to contact vendors and/or authors. At the end of this FAQ, a more extensive list of suggested ftp and WWW sites is included for your reference.

    **HOW TO USE MOSAIC/NETSCAPE TO VIEW CHINESE**

    Recently, the World Wide Web (WWW) has become very popular. It is now possible, and preferable to many, to view and communicate in Chinese on the web with Netscape and/or Mosaic and other such tools. Since Netscape and Mosiac are similar tools and Netscape is more popular, we use only Netscape to illustrate how to get the job done.

    To view Chinese under Netscape, you need to run Netscape under a Chinese system which can be launched from Windows. This is very much like running MS-DOS based Chinese systems (ZWDOS, KC, etc) to read Chinese on-line under DOS. Examples of Chinese systems are: UnionWay, Twinbridge, ChineseWindows, Chineseware and others. The shareware versions of these Chinese systems are available by anonymous ftp, at the sites listed at the end of this part of the FAQ. If you can get on the WWW with Netscape, the web sites listed below will lead you to the appropriate places where these Chinese systems are archived.

    Once you have obtained these systems, all you need to do is to run them as a WINDOWS application, so that they are ready when you start Netscape. Within Netscape, you may have to select a Chinese font under "Options," "Preference" and "Configuration." Depending on the coding scheme of the newsgroup or Chinese library you are trying to read, you may need to choose to run the Chinese system that supports the particular scheme. The good news is that the latest versions of these shareware Chinese systems can display Chinese under several coding schemes (GB/HZ/Big5). So you may need to get only one such system and only select the coding scheme you use for the moment. This selection is usually done when you launch the Chinese system, before running Netscape.

    We need to remind you that this part of the Internet is changing on a daily basis, literally, and so do the Chinese applications in this part. New things come out everyday that make using the WWW easier and more interesting. So it pays to keep up with the development, even if you are not a cyber junkie. For information about the latest developments in Chinese systemsand applications, we suggest that you check out the following places for answers to questions related to Mosaic/Netscape. Of course they also provide links to WWW sites where new and free software can be found.

    http://www.mordor.com/pei/china.html
    http://meena.cc.uregina.ca/~liushus/pub/read-chn.html
    http://www.gy.com ([Chinese Computer Digest])

    (6) Can I communicate in Chinese with friends and others, like using email and reading and posting in Chinese in newsgroups?

    Certainly. Once you have installed the necessary software, and you have the communications software (email, telnet, gopher or Mosaic/Netscape) already running on your computer, you can use them in conjunction with your Chinese software. Just make sure the following things are taken care of before you start firing away with your Chinese:

  • Check that your communications software is compatible with your Chinese software. This is usually done by configuring the software with appropriate fonts and other system settings.
  • Contact your friends and others you communicate with on the Internet. If they are also set up for Chinese computing, then you are ready to "talk" to each other in Chinese.
  • Make sure the newsgroup you want to post your Chinese writings to accepts the coding system (GB, HZ, Big5 or UNICODE) you use.

    (7) List of anonymous ftp and WWW sites

    ftp.ifcss.org: pub/software
    nctuccca.edu.tw: Chinese/ifcss/software
    cnd.org: pub/software
    moers2.edu.tw:chinese-pub/

    http://www.mordor.com/pei/china.html
    http://meena.cc.uregina.ca/~liushus/pub/read-chn.html
    http://www.gy.com ([Chinese Computer Digest])


    written by: Jihong Cole-Dai < jidai@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu >

    with editorial assistance from: Mark Swofford < mswofford@aardvark.ucs.uoknor.edu >


    List of soc.culture.china FAQ authors and contributors (in alphabetical order)

    Jihong Cole-Dai < jidai@magnus.acs.ohio-sate.edu >
    Bo Peng < bpeng@chelsea.ios.com >
    Ray Zhan Su < raysu@hphkae0.hkg.hp.com >
    Mark Swofford < mswofford@aardvark.ucs.uoknor.edu >
    Wuchun Wu < wuwu@phys.ksu.edu >
    Tung-Chiang Yang < tcyang@netcom.com >

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