Date: Wed, 18 Aug 1993 17:18:23 EDT Reply-To: John Delacour <100111.3564%COMPUSERVE.COM@CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU> Sender: Chinese Computing Network From: John Delacour <100111.3564%COMPUSERVE.COM@CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU> Subject: *** FOR MAC NETTERS MAINLY *** Comments: To: Chinese Computing To: Multiple recipients of list CCNET-L Status: R Dear Netters, Dongchu's recent uuencoded posting made me remember that it took me a long time when I first subscribed to CCNET-L to get together the software to read these files and I thought it might be useful to other netters using Macintosh computers to have a sketch of what is available for reading Hanzi files sent through Internet. Experienced users will forgive me for posting this message, which is of use mainly to Macintosh users and to those unfamiliar with Chinese computing. *************************************************************** * * * * * * * * * * * B A S I C S * * * * * * * * * * *************************************************************** 1. MOST THINGS ARE POSSIBLE!! 2. Only the first 128 (2^8) of the 256 (=2^16) ASCII characters can be transmitted though the Internet - it is therefore impossible to send all the ASCII characters that are needed to create Chinese characters. 3. A Chinese character is made up of a combination of two characters from the full ASCII code. Using "two-byte" characters it is possible to give a "disk address" to 2^8 * 2^8 = 2^16 = 65,536 individual characters - plenty of room therefore for all the Chinese characters and a lot more. 4. There are at present two widely used two-byte codes for Hanzi: GB (mainland) and Big 5 (Taiwan). There is no natural correspondence between the two but basically the GB system is phonetically ordered while the Big5 code is graphically ordered; the details are not important here. 5. A Hanzi will be represented as, for example, (ASCII-Hexadecimal) A8DC, which translates into (for example only) %+, and this pair of bytes can be read as a unique Hanzi using either code and suitable translating software. 6. ALL the ASCII characters can be "UUencoded" (ie. reduced to the 127 characters that will go through the "gateways") for transmission via Internet. *************************************************************** * * * * * * * U U EN/DE- C O D I N G * * * * * * * * *************************************************************** There are two Macintosh programs freely available for translating from the 0-127 set to/from the 0-255 set of ASCII characters, namely BinHex4 and UUTool. I have found that UUTool is more reliable than BinHex4, but I don't know why or how either program performs the translation, so I have no comment to make on their relative merits except to say that I have more success with UUTool. If you have StuffIt Deluxe (commercial) or Stuffit Lite (Shareware) then you already have the BinHex4 facility to encode and decode files. If you haven't got either of these programs I strongly recommend at least Stuffit Lite for all sorts of compression and decompression. UUTool is available in various places and is _only_ for UUencoding/decoding As an example of what a UUencoded file looks like when you receive it I have copied the beginning and end of Dongchu's letter of yesterday. This is just to show the look of a UU file and will not decode because I have deleted the middle! * * * * * * * * * * * * section 1 of uuencode 5.21 of file letter.dcs by R.E.M. begin 644 letter.dcs MQ]>PKK7$S\C)^J.Z#0H-"B`@("#$^KK#(0T*#0H@("`@RM?/R-*JN-#0N\3Z MMM2AMK.LO+:ZNM?6S[7-LR!$0T1/4Z&WM<2YV-#$HZS'Z]2MP<+.TL/'LKO$ >>>>>>>>>>>>> TEXT DELETED MK]+&M;W)S]*[T-"AHPT*#0H@("#(Y[G[Q/J[N=/0RK+#M,[*S.*CK,[2P\>Z MW-2XTN*[V+3PH:.XT-"[Q/JUQ+G8T,2ZS=:GL]8A#0H-"@T*("`@Q/JUQ,7S .T]&CNB#+[[:LL_4-"AH- ` end sum -r/size 11316/4947 section (from "begin" to "end") sum -r/size 43135/3569 entire input file * * * * * * * * * * * * The file is characterised by 1. A signal to BEGIN decoding, 2. Lines of 61 characters, 3. A signal to end decoding If BinHex4 or UUTool don't find this configuration they will either complain or freeze your screen for you and force you to shut down and restart. It doesn't matter if the UUencoded file is contained in a file containing other messages in normal text - it is not necessary to separate The UU from the remainder of the text as this will be ignored by the decoding programme. *************************************************************** * * * * * * * H O W T O D E C O D E * * * * * * * * *************************************************************** The programmes "UUTool" and "DeHqx" are "drag and drop" applications. Find a corner for them on your desktop and when you want to decode a UUencodede text file, just drag it on to the UUTool or DeHqx icon. With either of these applications or with Stuffit etc. it is also possible to open the application first and then work from menus, command keys or (CE) QuickKeys (R). *************************************************************** * * * * * * * * * * W H A T N E X T ? * * * * * * * * * *************************************************************** Provided everything has gone OK your file <> will end up, decoded, in the folder you have asked for, as (for example) <>. (If you open this file in your wordprocessor you will see pure garbage, which is just what you want!! Select all the text and change the font to Helvetica if you want ultra-refined garbage -- Helvetica will give a unique ASCII (SINGLE-BYTE) character for every "Latin" character in the file) Now you have everything you need in order to get Hanzi on your screen, so what next?........SOFTWARE! For all general text-editing in relation to Hanzi I would recommend **McSink** (Shareware) or the commercial version **Vantage** ($90). These programmes are invaluable for all sorts of very fast text editing - I use McSink more and more and will very soon buy Vantage in order to repay Preferred Publishers for the time they have saved me. Another little programme for converting hexadecimal to ASCII-256 and back is JoliWrite (shareware $45) but it is a very slight application and certainly not worth the price. NOW FOR THE REAL CHINESE STUFF !!! Note well the next two lines because they are very important: ********* |||||||||| ifcss.org:/software directory is to store Chinese computer software. |||||||||| subdirectories are setup primarily according to operating systems. I copy here the MAC applications available by ftp from ifcss.org ******************************************************************************** I MAKE NO COMMENT ON THE FOLLOWING SOFTWARE EXCEPT TO SAY THAT IT IS USEFUL TO HAVE AN APPLICATION THAT WILL CONVERT GB <--> BIG5. I AM RUNNING MAC O/S 7.1 FOR MOST PURPOSES AND TRADITIONAL 6.0.3 FOR CHINESE, so consider everything I have written in the light of this restriction. I have put *** in front of the applications I have available. === MAC === ========== MAC:VIEWER ========== software: MacViewHZ version : 2.1 function: Simplified and traditional chinese text viewer ftp site: ifcss.org[129.107.1.155]:/software/mac/viewer filename: macviewhz.hqx, macviewhz2.hqx auther : Xiaodong Chen, xchen@holonet.net comments: Chinese OS is NOT required, support HZ coding scheme and print as well as selective print. software: MacHanzi version : 0.3 function: Simlified and traditional Chinese text viewer ftp site: ifcss.org[129.107.1.155]:/software/mac/viewer filename: machanzi.hqx, machanzi.readme author : Xing Li, please address your comments to email: qzhou@research.att.com comments: View and print gb and big5 chinese text. software: HanziTerm version : 0.5 function: A terminal emulator for Mac Chinese OS 6.0.x or later. Support 8-bit character code, HZ, and zW. ftp site: ifcss.org[129.107.1.155]:/software/mac/viewer filename: hanziterm-05.hqx author : Ricky Yeung, search 'Ricky Yeung' for more info. email: Ricky.Yeung@Eng.Sun.Com comments: Macintosh Chinese OS (Beijing or Taipei, 6.0.x or later) required. software: GraphTerm version : n/a function: Tektronix 4010/4014 emulator ftp site: ifcss.org[129.107.1.155]:/software/mac/viewer filename: graphterm.hqx auther : Infrastructure Software, shareware. comments: Claimed to work on system 6.0.x, but tested ok on system 7.1 can be used to view chinese on a mac while running "chirk" on a unix machine. software: NewsWatcher version : n/a function: Chinese version of News Watcher ftp site: ifcss.org[129.107.1.155]:/software/mac/viewer filename: newswatcher.hqx author : John H. Jenkins email: John_Jenkins@taligent.com comments: Macintosh Chinese OS, MacTCP and Usenet (NNTP news server) access required. *** software: QRead version : 2.5 function: DA ftp site: ifcss.org[129.107.1.155]:/software/mac/viewer filename: qread25.hqx author : Wang Huangxin email: wang@pennmess.physics.upenn.edu comments: Macintosh Chinese OS (Beijing) required. software: Taipei-100 version : 1.0.2 function: vt100 terminal emulator for Taiwan Chinese OS. ftp site: ifcss.org[129.107.1.155]:/software/mac/viewer filename: viewer/taipei-100.hqx, taipei-doc.hqx, taipei-src.hqx author : Pai Chou email: chou@june.cs.washington.edu comments: Mac Chinese Big5 OS is required. It allows to send/read unix e-mail in mixed English and Hanzi by using "T3" encoding scheme. Source code and documentation are included. software: Subtitle version : 0.2 function: Terminal emulator ftp site: ifcss.org[129.107.1.155]:/software/mac/viewer filename: subtitle.hqx author : Ed Lai email: lai@apple.com comments: To viewe zW/HZ encoded texts. Please see documents included. *** software: Clipboard Magician version : 0.72 function: DA ftp site: ifcss.org[129.107.1.155]:/software/mac/viewer filename: clipboardmagician-72.hqx author : Ed Lai, search 'Ed Lai' for more info comments: To viewe a chinese text file, and to paste chinese to a text editor and many other functions, please see the documents included. ============ MAC:CONVERT ============ *** software: HC 1.5 version : 1.5 function: converts big5 <=> gb ftp site: ifcss.org[129.107.1.155]:/software/mac/convert filename: hc15.hqx author : Fung F. Lee and Ricky Yeung search 'Fung F. Lee' and 'Ricky Yeung' for more info software: HZ-2.0 version : n/a function: convert various formats of Chinese characters ftp site: ifcss.org[129.107.1.155]:/software/mac/convert filename: HZ-2.0.hqx auther : Fung F. Lee search 'Fung F. Lee' for more info The programs hz2gb, gb2hz, zw2hz are ported from the UNIX versions. They convert from HZ to GB, GB to HZ, and zW to HZ respectively. software: HC 3.0L version : n/a function: convert gb <=> big5 ftp site: ifcss.org[129.107.1.155]:/software/mac/convert filename: HC-3.0L.hqx auther : Fung F. Lee & Ricky Yeung search 'Fung F. Lee' for more info software: B2T version : n/a function: convert binary to T3 encoding scheme ftp site: ifcss.org[129.107.1.155]:/software/mac/convert filename: b2t.c author : Pai Chou, search 'Pai Chou' elsewhere for more info comments: Source code only. For Pai Chou's Taipei-100. software: T2B version : n/a function: convert T3 encoding scheme to binary ftp site: ifcss.org[129.107.1.155]:/software/mac/convert filename: t2b.c author : Pai Chou, search 'Pai Chou' elsewhere for more info comments: Source code only. For Pai Chou's Taipei-100. software: A2B2T version : n/a function: stream filter "atob | b2t" in one combined program. ftp site: ifcss.org[129.107.1.155]:/software/mac/convert filename: a2b2t.c author : Pai Chou, search 'Pai Chou' elsewhere for more info comments: Converts HKU news (encoded using btoa) into Taipei-100 readable Hanzi. software: gb2pinyin version : n/a function: convert gb to pinyin tones ftp site: ifcss.org[129.107.1.155]:/software/mac/convert filename: gb2pinyin auther : Tommi Kaikkonen, ported on Mac by Liedong Zheng comments: It is aimed to help those whose native language is not Chinese. ============ MAC:INPUT ============ *** software: cihui version : n/a function: A phrase input method for both simplified and traditional chinese ftp site: ifcss.org[129.107.1.155]:/software/mac/input/cihui.6.0.x filename: cihui-big5.hqx, cihui-doc.hqx, cihui-hgb.hqx, cihui-util.hqx author : Ed Lai, search 'Ed Lai' for more info comments: Either a simplified or a traditional Mac Chinese OS 6.0.x is required. Please see documents included. software: cihui version : n/a function: A phrase input method for both simplified and traditional chinese ftp site: ifcss.org[129.107.1.155]:/software/mac/input/cihui.7.1 filename: app.sit.hqx, cihui.readme, dict.big5.pinyin.sit.hqx, dict.gb.pinyin.sit.hqx, doc.sit.hqx, misc.sit.hqx author : Ed Lai, search 'Ed Lai' for more info comments: cihui input method for Mac System 7.1 World Script. Please see documents included for use and installation. ============ MAC:PRINT ============ software: GB2PS version : n/a function: Print a GB file on a PostScript printer ftp site: ifcss.org[129.107.1.155]:/software/mac/print filename: macgb2ps.hqx author : Xiaodong Chen email: xchen@TERAPIN.COM comments: system 6.x.x and 7.0 required. ========= MAC:SOUND ========= software: Mandarin version : 1.0 function: speak out mandarin chinese through mac's speakers ftp site: ifcss.org[129.107.1.155]:/software/mac/sound filename: mandarin.hqx auther : Liedong Zheng, e-mail: lz@flynn.chem.columbia.edu comments: Chinese OS is NOT required, works on system 6.x.x and 7.x ======== MAC:MISC ======== software: RAndpy version : 1.0 function: Screen saver ftp site: ifcss.org[129.107.1.155]:/software/mac/misc filename: randpy.hqx author : Wang Huangxin, search 'Wang Huangxin' elsewhere for more info comments: contains both standalone and After Dark module. software: Scroll version : 1.1 function: After Dark module ftp site: ifcss.org[129.107.1.155]:/software/mac/misc filename: scroll.hqx author : Wang Huangxin, search 'Wang Huangxin' elsewhere for more info I hope that the uselessness of this posting to those for whom it is redundant is balanced by its usefulness to others. John * * * * * Please do not write to me at the above address if you have any comments -- but I shall be happy to respond to messages sent to:- jdelacour@cix.compulink.co.uk