[WEB4LIB:14679] Re: CJK readers for Web browsers

[Bin Zhang]

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.

--
Bin Zhang <bzhang at hawaii.edu>
Automation/Reference Librarian
Kapiolani Community College Library
University of Hawaii
4303 Diamond Head Road, Honolulu, HI 96816
808-734-9254 (Voice); 808-734-9453 (Fax); 808-549-0117 (Pager)
Library Homepage: http://library.kcc.hawaii.edu


> -----Original Message-----
> From: Bin Zhang [mailto:bzhang at hawaii.edu]On Behalf Of Bob Rasmussen
> Sent: Thursday, July 30, 1998 11:03 AM
> To: Multiple recipients of list
> Subject: [WEB4LIB:14679] Re: CJK readers for Web browsers
>
>
> On Thu, 30 Jul 1998, Kevin W. Bishop wrote:
>
> >
> > Recently a patron at our library wanted to read a Chinese
> newspaper on the
> > Web, which brought to our attention the fact that our
> workstations are not
> > setup to read Chinese character sets.  (The same is probably true for
> > Japanese and Korean.)
> > ...
>
> 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.
>
> Now if you're interested in CJK *telnet*, contact me.
>
> Regards,
> ...Bob Rasmussen,   President,   Rasmussen Software, Inc.
> Author, Anzio telnet products
> personal e-mail: ras at anzio.com
>  company e-mail: rsi at anzio.com or sales at anzio.com or support at anzio.com
>  ftp://ftp.anzio.com               voice: 503-624-0360
> http://www.anzio.com                 fax: 503-624-0760
>
>
>