Subject: CCCII used by Taiwan (and several US) libraries

From: Robert Felsing <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 9 Jun 1993 13:20:24 -0700

A number of Internet
-accessible libraries use CCII instead of
Big-5 coding.  Does anyone know of a "reader" that is available for CCCII?
It's a shame that the Big-5 option is not made available at all libraries.
These libraries are, of course, using online systems created by Innovative
Interfaces, which makes the situation even more frustrating.

        A second question:  Is there any inexpensive Japanese operating
system that will allow for the reading of text transmitted by Japanese
Gophers?  I assume Japanese DOS/V works.  Does anyone know of ANY Japanese
libraries that are accessible over the Internet?

        Many thanks for any assistance or suggestions!

                        Bob Felsing
                        East Asian Bibliographer
                        University of Oregon
                        Eugene, OREGON USA

                        ([email-masked]

---

From: Dr CK Farn <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 10 Jun 1993 09:25:18 -0800

>It's a shame that the Big-5 option is not made available at all libraries.

CCCII are choosen for most libraries for a simple and strong reason.  Big-5
and most other Chinese (fan2ti2) coding schemes only allow for arond 13K
characters, which is for most practical purposes, more than enough.
However, for library use, the character set is simply too small.  CCCII
theoretically holds 76K+ characters (most implementation, I understand,
have 30K+ characters).

In Taiwan, much of the library systems uses CCCII as internal codes, and
allow for special CCCII terminals (very expensive due to low volume) so
that librarians can do necessary updates and inserts.  However, for network
connections that uses only the inquiry function, most library system caters
for an "on the fly" translation between CCCII and Big5, so that a normal
Chinese (Big5) Telnet frontend can access the information.

This solution seems odd, but it is based on requirements, unless we treat
the characters beyond 13K as " " in the system.  For the translation, it is
for extending user services.

For the US users whose oriental library do not have the translation
facilities at the host side, one can also make an "on the fly" translation
at the terminal side between CCCII/Big5 or CCCII/GB, it should not be a
major technical problem.
_____________________________________________________________
Dr C.K.Farn       Information Mgmt Dept.,National Central U.,
(-S?~1j)          Chung-li, Taiwan 320, Republic of China
Tel: 886-3-426-7261,886-3-4227151x6527  Fax: 886-3-425-4604
Email: [email-masked]