CJK displays

[Andrea Duda]

I was in a meeting today where one of the topics of discussion was
displaying CJK characters in web browsers.  Right now we run into some
problems when our patrons try to read Japanese newspapers, etc.  It will be
more of an issue when we switch to a web-based catalog that will have to
display information on titles in our East Asian collection.

Right now all of our public access computers are running Netscape
Navigator.  I'm told that Internet Explorer does a better job of displaying
other alphabets, that it's more transparent to the user.  Before we make
any decisions about switching browsers I thought I'd ask this group for
information.  

Do you know if Netscape has any plans to incorporate other alphabets easily
into their browsers?  Are there plug-ins that would display CJK characters
without requiring anything from the user other than selecting the page?
Are there options other than Internet Explorer?

If you'll send the information directly to me I'll be happy to post a
summary later.

Thanks for your help.





Andrea L. Duda			
Networked Information Access Coordinator
Davidson Library
University of California, Santa Barbara
duda at library.ucsb.edu