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Reading/Writing Chinese Using Linux?
Posted by
Cliff
on Sat Jul 06, 2002 04:25 PM
from the but-my-mandarin-is-a-bit-rusty dept.
from the but-my-mandarin-is-a-bit-rusty dept.
Rimbo asks: "I'm building a computer for a friend, who has three major requirements from his system: He wants an Athlon with a 333MHz FSB, he wants absolutely no Microsoft software anywhere near it, and he needs the ability to read and edit Chinese. I imagine Red Flag Linux has great Chinese support, but is it as easy to use as a desktop OS as Mandrake or Red Hat? How easy is Chinese text editing and entry under the major distributions? What "office" software for Linux is good for editing Chinese? Thanks!"
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Reading/Writing Chinese Using Linux?
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Use the web (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.ibiblio.org/mdw/HOWTO/Chinese-HOWTO.ht
Abiword (Score:4, Informative)
Not as easy as Mandrake or RH (Score:5, Funny)
No, I found it much more difficult to use. Everything is in Chinese!!
Chinese Patch for Redhat (Score:3, Insightful)
Check out .
Yangchunbaixue KDE Chinese Environment or YKCE is a hybridly licensed software that turns Red Hat Linux 7.1 into a sophisticated Chinese KDE desktop environment.
I have a client who is Japanese.. (Score:3, Offtopic)
I've done both Japanese and Chinese input editing with Windows and MacOS 9, and my client uses Japanese input the majority of the time he uses a PC. He and his friends flatly refuse to use anything but Windows 2000 for hardcore input. The reason? Microsoft's Japanese IME. [microsoft.com] Mac OS 9's input support doesn't compare to this tiny bar that sits at the corner of your screen and lets you flip back and forth between English and several other character sets. According to my client, both mouse support (i.e. clicking the little bar and bringing up the language) and keyboard support (using key commands to change languages) are VASTLY more efficient in Windows 2000 than in MacOS 9. In fact, he's planning to drop his (older) Macs for Windows 2000 and XP machines solely based on this feature.
Now, I'm not saying that there isn't something similar for Linux. But if Apple couldn't come up with anything more productive for MacOS 9, which was intended from the start to be a consumer-level, desktop, OS, I am highly doubtful that Linux developers can come up with anything better. As is, my client and all of his friends are on either 2000 or XP and are quite happy with their decision.
As it stands, I believe your friend's decision to not use Microsoft products may be a bit short-sighted, especially considering that this is one of my client's only reasons to switch to Windows from MacOS.
Re:I have a client who is Japanese.. (Score:4, Informative)
Re:I have a client who is Japanese.. (Score:5, Insightful)
I use it for my Japanese text editing and I was extremely impressed by the quality of their IME. I'm no big fan of MS in general, but I have to say that this is one place where their software is simply Right. I try to avoid using Japanese in unix so I haven't explored all the possibilities there, but the solutions I've seen have been comparatively weak and ad hoc. This is one place where Linux might have to catch up to MS, but they'll never do better.
I have a WIFE who is Chinese (Score:5, Informative)
Notwithstanding all the "Linux trolls" who post "search Google" and "Here's a Chinese input project, it must be good," Linux just can't do Chinese (or Japanese) now.
Let's put this in perspective. I've been Microsoft-free personally for about 5 years now. Both my laptops and all my workstations (at home and work) run Linux. That's about five machines running Linux now. I'm very happy.
My wife knows nothing about computers. She doesn't know Windows, she doesn't know Linux. So I can install Linux for her, right? Wrong.
Because Chinese input for Linux simply isn't as good as Microsoft Win2K.
As the parent points out, the Microsoft Asian-input methods are well-thought out. They allow you to seamlessly shift into and out of English and Chinese (and Japanese).
Chinese itself has at least three major input methods, each of which is a long, complicated process to implement. My wife reads/writes "Traditional Chinese" (what they read/write in Taiwan) as opposed to "Simplified Chinese" (what they read/write in China and what Red Flag Linux certainly only supports).
Microsoft Win2K handles all Chinese and Japanese input methods so well that my wife and others who are actually from Mainland China are all happy.
Linux doesn't seem to make anyone happy.
Sure, there are projects out there. As the Linux Troll with a highly-rated comment mentioned earlier, "Search Google!" -- yeh, you'll get tons of hits, and every one of them will be a waste of your time.
Maybe in another year or two.
I'd be happy if someone who's actually used Chinese input on Linux and Win2K tell me there's something as good for Linux. I'll try it in a heartbeat. I've been waiting YEARS to get my wife off of Windows.
Note: All this rant doesn't say much about Chinese *OUTPUT* -- Linux seems to display Big5 (traditional) and other Chinese/Japanese just fine. It's the input that's not ready yet.
Try Redhat (Score:3, Informative)
I only say this because the default install, when selecting Japanese as the primary language, worked right out the box for my wife. She's had no complaints (she actually loves the speed improvement over Windoze), although cannaserver, etc don't work exactly like windoze, but she picked it up quickly. Even the man pages are in Japanese. Need an English man page, simply do a
and you're in bidness.
I say all this GUESSING that the support for Chinese in Redhat will be just as good, if not better, as the Japanese support.
Oh, BTW, Abiword does do internationalization. As does Mozilla, Sylpheed (this thing rocks!), gqview. The basics are covered, but you probably already knew that.
Using chinese with Mandrake (Score:5, Informative)
Mandrake comes with
1. chinese input (both big5 and gb) with xcin.
2. cjk latex for editing (if you already know how to use latex, of course)
3. mozilla is big 5 (gb?) aware already
4. there's a chinese shell somewhere on the disk
5. emacs works with big5 input without xcin.
Fonts, locales and even some manpages and howtos also comes with the distribution. The only thing I haven't got working is actually displaying chinese in the title bars and window manager toolbars.
Look at TurboLinux? (Score:5, Informative)
I'm on Debian and... (Score:5, Informative)
Basically you have you sort out locale packages, fonts, and then inputing method (XIM), and lastly the apps you want to use chinese.
For locale, most distributions include proper and working locale packages. So all you have to do is install them. Locale packages are related to glibc btw. The way locale packages work has changed a bit from glibc 2.1 to 2.2. But anyway both work well.
And then for fonts. Most of the time, you need both X fonts (.bdf files) and truetype fonts. Both are quite easy to get on the net if your distribution of Linux doesn't include them. They are all in Debian, for example. And I think a chinese distribution like RedFlag will include a bunch of them.
For chinese, I use xcin for inputing. It supports big5 and gb encoding, and also all sorts of common inputing method, such as changjei, bopomofo, cantonese, etc. There are also people developing custom inputing method you can use with xcin, such as smartcj [scj2000.net]
Finally, applications to use. To start with, I think it's a must to have a terminal which works with the language you need. For example, I have crxvt (chinese rxvt). And so I can run all sort of text based programs with chinese working straight away.
Most of the time all you need is to do:
export LANG=zh_TW.Big5 XMODIFIERS=@im=xcin
for your environment. Run the inputing method, and then run your applications. Most applications will work pretty well with XIM.
For office software, I've tried Openoffice.org only, with inputing working. Sometimes it is buggy, but usable. As long as you have truetype fonts installed and Openoffice.org knows about those fonts, you're sorted. Printing works straight away too. While, Staroffice doesn not work properly with XIM, for some reasons.
I haven't tried any chinese linux distribution, but I imagine they might be even much more easier to setup for chinese.
Just a note for Japanese and Korean. I have kinput2 with canna server, kterm for Japanese. hanterm and ami for Korean. Both kinput2 and ami work with Openoffice.org, too.
Debian, KDE, true-type fonts = beautiful Zhong Wen (Score:5, Informative)
* KDE 2.2.2
* ttf-arphic-* true type fonts (traditional and simplified are available)
* XCIN, with a little tweaking to get it working properly - does Pinyin input, which most people prefer
* locales - make sure your
* environment variables - there is a Debian Chinese HOWTO which tells you what you need to set.
The key thing is the fonts (turn on anti-aliasing in KDE, make sure your X windows is set up to support this). The Arphic AA fonts look utterly magnificent, easily the best chinese fonts around. KDE supports X input (i.e. XCIN) quite happily, so you can use KOffice etc. and type in Chinese without a problem.
One of these days I'll get around to writing a HOWTO to explain exactly how it works - if you want details, pester me by e-mailing daniel at ieee dot uow dot edu dot au.
Re:What about the hardware (Score:3, Informative)
All 3000+ kanji in japanese and 20000+ in chinese can be input using a keyboard.
For chinese though, this is difficult due to the number, which is why MS Office is winning people over with the voice input system.
Re:hey man (Score:3, Funny)