Summary: CJK readers for public workstations
Kevin W. Bishop
bishopk at rpi.edu
Tue Aug 11 13:35:41 EDT 1998
Here’s a summary of the suggestions I received for enabling browsers (in this
case, Nav. 4.0 on Win95) to read CJK (Chinese, Japanese and Korean) character
sets. Perhaps I should note that Chinese frequently has more than a few
distinct character sets, Japanese two and Korean one. We are still testing a
few products and have yet to decide which will best serve our needs and suit
our limitations.
I’ve tried to remove the identifying text of these extremely helpful and
considerate people in part because some replies came from non-list members.
Oh, and I haven’t included any requests for this summary. That would be
silly. Besides, there were too many.
THANK YOU to EVERYONE who offered their time and expertise!
-kb
If you are using IE4 multilanguage support including Japanese,Korean,
Pan-European, Chinese(traditional),Chinese(simplified) as a free upgrade to
IE4.
http://www.microsoft.com/ie/ie40/download/rtw/x86/en/download/addon95.htm
is the site but you can go to the http://www.microsoft.com/ie40 site and
let the
download wizard do it for you.
---------------------------------------
The most popular CJK reader softwares are Richwin, NJStar and
AsianSuite97 from UnionWay. They are sharewares and very easy to
install.
I don't know about freeware that will work with Netscape, but Microsoft
offers free CJK configurations for Internet Explorer 4.0. You can download
support for each of the character sets (simplified Chinese, traditional
Chinese, Japanese, and Korean) from the Microsoft Windows Update site. To
switch from one character set to another, you left-click in the browser
window and select Language. I kept trying to set the character set through
Internet Options, but all that does is set the language priority (i.e. if a
site is available in both English and Japanese, you can configure your
browser to default to one or the other).
As you probably know, there are many commercial products out there that
offer CJK support. They're quite inexpensive (UnionWay, for instance, is
$19.95). If the demand is not that great, you can always buy one copy and
have an "international-friendly" workstation for those times when someone
needs the character set support.
This is one area where I think IE has outdone Netscape by a long shot. They
even have "Pan-European" character sets (Cyrillic, Greek, etc.)!
According to Netscape's page at
http://search.netscape.com/eng/intl/relnotes/crelnotesFinalWin.html
Communicator 4 can display Chinese, Japanese, and Korean (CJK) fonts if they
are installed on the PC (Win95 or NT).
Microsoft has some CJK fonts available for download. One place you can do this
is in the "update" area for IE 3 or 4, such as (start at):
http://www.microsoft.com/ie/download/addon.htm
Downloading and installing these mods adds various CJK fonts to your
system, as
well as some underlying support. These fonts can then be used by various other
programs. Note that CJK font files are VERY large, and loading them could be
slow on older systems.
(Check license restrictions.)
Although I have not experimented with Communicator in CJK, my experiments with
IE, and with character sets in general, suggest these caveats:
1. Many web pages do not TELL you (or your browser) what character set they
contain. Thus you need to change your browser's "default" to match that page's
encoding. This may create problems with security lockdowns on public PCs.
2. You may encounter web pages that use non-HTML-standard encoding schemes,
such as CCCII. These require add-ons to your PC.
3. Having a browser that can DISPLAY CJK pages is the first step. This can be
done on any Win95 system, for instance, and does not require Chinese Windows
95. INPUT of CJK characters is a not possible, however, without either running
in Chinese Win95 or using a third-party input editor.
Just in case no one from Queens Library is on this list, I'll suggest that you
contact them.
In the "About WorldLinQ" they say:
"What language software is the Library using to enable customers to access
WorldLinQ? Currently, the Library has installed AsianSuite 97 (link) on some
Central Library and branches Internet PCs. AsianSuite provides customer access
to WorldLinQ's Chinese and Korean sites, as well as other Internet resources
written in Chinese, Japanese and Korean worldwide." They've got a really
impressive (to me) service offered. Check out
http://www.queens.lib.ny.us/wlinq/index.html
[Indeed, this is an impressive site!]
There area a variety of packages available that sit on top of Windows to
give American PCs East Asian language capability. If you decise to use
Microsoft Internet Explorer, they have a download package of fonts that
allow Chinese Japanese and Korean reading and writing.
Personally, I use the package offered by Unionway. You can download a
trial pack for 60 day use from http://www.unionway.com I like Unionway
because it handles all three languages (Chinese, Japanese, and Korean) and
both
simplified and traditional Chinese. It is easy to use. Prints beautifully and
also works with Ewan telnet software (to get into library catalogs). I also
use
Unionway and Netscape to read my email because POP clients don't strip the 8th
bit.
Other options include Twinbridge (www.twinbridge.com) or NJStar. There are
also free options that allow people to read only but not write. I don't
use them because I want to be able to search online catalogs in Chinese as
well as view them.
Start with the trial version of Unionway. Choose the ProPack, and watch
your students go wild. They can search WebCatalogs, Books in Print,
Bookstores as well as newspapers etc.
The other thing to keep in mind is that you should consult with the
Foreign Language Center to see if you are both using the same software. It
is easier on the students.
Did you see this message? It may be out of date by now, but...
http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/Web4Lib/archive/9709/0123.html
My colleague
forward your "CJK readers for Web browsers" to me since she
knew
I presented "Using Foreign Language Electronic Resources - Focus on Chinese,
Japanese, and Korean" at Online Northwest'98 in Portland in February 1998.
Before that conference, I tried:
NJWIN CJK Multilingual Support System (http://www.njstar.com.au/njwin/),
UnionWay (http://www.unionway.com/),
RichWin (http://www.richwinusa.com/),
AsiaView by TwinBridge Software Corporation (http://www.twinbridge.com/),
Chinese Star (http://www.suntendyusa.com/),
ChinesePro (http://www.chinapro.com/cpro.html),
HANME HANGUL - How to View Hangul, the Korean Alphabetical Characters at WWW
(http://www.ssc.msu.edu/~ahnb/hangul.html), and so on.
Among these, I like NJWIN very much. It is very easy to install and use. I use
it to read Chinese newspapers and magazines published in China, Taiwan and
Hong
Kong on the Web. I also use it to help our students and faculty to convert
Japanese, Chinese, and Korean e-mail messages. You can download a share ware
software and try it for free. For others, you may even download or purchase
software to type CJK characters in your word documents or e-mail. Good luck.
The Nov/Dec 1997 issue of Computers in Libraries included an article on
using CJK software for the Web. The products featured in the article were:
AsiaSurf - http://www.asianet.net.hk/regasur OR
http://www.crystal-int.com/asurfe.htm
Asian Viewer - http://www.ifcss.org/ftp-pub/software/ms-win/c-sys OR
http://www.twinbridge.com
AsianSuite 97 - http://www.unionway.com
NJWIN - http://www.njstar.com.au/njwin/#1
I don't believe any of them is freeware or shareware but all have
downloadable evaluation copies.
Here is the article citation:
Lin, Zi-Yu. "How to Use CJK Software to Read Chinese, Japanese, and Korean
on the Web." Computers in Libraries, November/December 1997, 50-54.
-------------------------
Try NJStar site
http://www.njstar.com/
or this site:
http://www.cathay.net/help/read-chn.shtml
We also use NJWin and are very happy with it. Definitely worth a look.
Kevin, I did some reading on this subject and got the impression that in
order to accommodate foreign language browsing in Netscape some fussing
around and frustration will inevitably occur. I didn't try it myself, and
instead went with an option that several parties strongly recommended...A
browser called Tango. At first it seemed radical to go with something
other than our old faithful...Netscape...but what we did is we installed
Tango on one workstation and have made it the foreign language browsing
terminal. Obviously, Netscape is available from all others. Tango can
handle a variety of languages (we are using Chinese and Arabic) and it
costs about sixty dollars. The web site is at www.alis.com.
There is one downside to Tango...it does not handle Java and although the
Tango Web site claims that Java is coming soon, the rep I spoke to told me
it might never happen. The upside is that we have had it about two months
now and it has been hassle free so far. Really, it couldn't have been
easier to set up and it hasn't given us any trouble since.
As for Chinese in particular, I know that Tango offers two different types
of Chinese characters (traditional and simplified) and I can assure you
that our Chinese students use Tango regularly.
I forgot to mention that we also have Japanese and Korean set up to work on
Tango.
try - NJWIN CJK Internet Viewer V1.6
http://www.njstar.com.au/
It's not freeware, but it's only US $49
Did you install the Microsoft Far East Support? You can find it on the
Microsoft Office CD in a "supplement" folder (I don't know how it is
called in English as we use the German Version of MS Office). You will
find there a Japanese and two Chinese Supports (traditional and
simplified). I hope this information will help you.
If you are using IE, you can now input CJK characters. You need to download
the "Global IME" from Microsoft web site. This IME also works with Outlook
Express and Outlook 98. It does not work with Netscape.
There is one problem with this approach (ie, installing fonts without
installing a CJK environment software, such as UnionWay, NJWin, or
whatever): If the page was created Microsoft Frontpage, they may not
display right on browser.
For example, Microsoft uses <meta http-equiv="Content-type" content=
"text/html; charset="gb_2312-80"> for Simplified Chinese (GB encoding).
If you try to view a page with this tag in Netscape, you won't be able to
see Chinese, because Netscape uses "gb2312" for GB encoding. So, the best
thing
for page authors to do is not to specify a character set, and have the
users to
manually switch to the language encoding. Frontpage 97 does not allow you to
delete the characterset tag, Frontpage 98 does.
>>Tengo una pregunta, que quizás me puedas ayudar. De la biblioteca nos
>>preguntaron (en la oficina internacional) si sabemos de software para que
>>la computadora pueda utilizar los caracteres de lenguas asiáticas,
>>incluyendo el japonés. ¿Conoces algún programa que haga esto? ¿Alguna
>>recomendación en particular?
>>De antemano, gracias.
>As per conversation, here is some info on Japanese and other Asian
>softwares. The one I'm using to read Japanese is called NJWIN CJK
>Multilingual System v1.02, and you can find it at
>http://www.gy.com/www/ww1/ww2/nijidemo.htm. This software enables you to
>read Japanese, Chinese, and Korean, I believe.
>
>Hope this helps.
--------------
_______________________________________________________________________
Kevin W. Bishop bishopk at rpi.edu
Campus-Wide Information System Coordinator http://www.rpi.edu/rpinfo/
Libraries and Information Services
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute http://www.rpi.edu/
110 8th St. Troy, NY, 12180-3590
(518) 276-8332 Fax 276-8559
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