Subject: Re: Chinese viewer on NeXT

From: "L.S.Ng" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 20 Feb 1994 15:50:58 GMT

For those who are interested in writing Chinese function library on
their platform, here is some legal considerations.

(Why write Chinese function library? Because there is no Chinese
function library available for your platform.  Ignore this if this is
not true for your case.)

There are two kind of databases required for Chinese input and output,

1. Dictionary Files
2. Font files

Dictionary files are available in the public domain via anonymous
ftp:ifcss.org/software/x-win/cxterm-dictionaries

Each file has two columns, one list the input sequence, the other list
the corresponding Chinese code(s). There are character dictionary and
phrase dictionary. With this, we can write character and phase input
functions.

(The source code for CXTERM is available. But unfortunately source code
level documentation is not. So hopefully you can extract the dictionary
function from it. But I think it is still easier to rewrite your own.)

As with font files, those available in the public domain are up to 24x24
bitmap fonts. They are available by anonymous ftp from
ifcss.org:software/fonts

(Correct me if I am misinformed)

It is pretty boring to go strictly by law.:-) Here's the grey area.
(hopefully I am still legal bound)

1. there are tricks to 'generate' better bitmap fonts.
2. use standard vector fonts such as TTF

Font file handling falls into the category of data structure handling,
which is platform independent.  At the moment, my algorithm handles
bitmap fonts.  I hope we will do some TTF next.  The hottest (latest)
font now is vector composite font (proprietary), no standard as yet.
(Please tell me if you have decoded its format :-) )