Japanese with X 11
krynos asks:
"I'm currently learning Japanese (third human language) and
I would like to know how to be able to display and input
Japanese characters in X. What programs and fonts do I need
and where can I find them? "
What (little) I know (Score:1)
Boy this is an old article. Hope someone can still make use of this
In order to view Japanese characters in a program, the program appearently has to be compilied with a compilier set up to do double byte character translations. In other words, you have to download the source for gcc or whatever, and compile it on your own to include Japanese extensions. Then recompile all the programs that you want to be able to support those extensions.
I have been able to get Japanese characters to display on WindowMaker menus, but have not had good luck recompiling the gnome sources. Anyway, it has been a long time since I have done that, so there may be a few more steps.
I think it was mentioned above, but Debian also has a Japanese distribution.
If all you want to do is send and recieve email, krxvt (kterm), cannaserver, and kinput2 was the method I was using a year or so ago. If you can read Japanese, I strongly suggest checking out what some of the Linux users are doing here in Japan. Ganbatte!
japanese on X (Score:1)
If you also want to enter text then you need to build kterm kinput2 and one of the dictionaries like canna or wnn, when set up properly you can enter text in japanese enabled programs, like Mule, or even Netscape.
You might want to take a look at turbolinux's jp ftp site, for s/rpms. ftp://ftp.pht.co.jp/ or perhaps the japansese debian site http://www.debian.or.jp/
If you are running glibc 2 you need to make sure that it is internationalised, RH 5.2 does not seem to be compiled this way.
Beware though sometimes it is a bit hard to get all these things running there is not so much documentation on this in english.
Good Luck !
Japanese characters in X (Score:1)
To simply VIEW documents encoded in japanese, just take a file that's encoded with high-bit ascii and open it with netscape, and change the encoding to japanese. I'm not sure where you can pick these fonts up (they are in the standard distribution of Athena).
However, if you want to be able to EDIT japanese files, you'll need to use something like mule (multilanguage emacs), unless you're good with decoding high-bit ascii :)
To print these, look for jlpr, which takes a given input file and converts the high-bit ascii japanese characters to postscript. it's pretty nifty, but I'm not sure it exists outside of MIT's network (not sure if we wrote it).
Good luck,
Ken
Some info... (Score:1)
I'm dealing with this issue myself.
Check out this web page:
http://www.twics.com/~craig/writings/linux-niho
It's a little outdated, but it has a lot of good information about the various programs and utilities that are available.
If you use debian, check out the Japanese debian distribution (debian-jp) at ftp.debian.or.jp.
There are often Japan-ized versions of programs
that are very good.
Probably my favorite thing that I have found is JTeX. It's TeX that can handle Japanese characters. I use it for writing letters and doing Japanese homework sometimes. I don't know how to make it print vertically, but I'm sure someone's already done it.
Question:
Does anyone know how to use Japanese characters with The Gimp? I've tried cutting and pasting Japanese characters from either MULE or a kterm, but I can never get them to input correctly in the text tool of The Gimp. I imagine it is probably more closely related to gtk+, but I couldn't find any documentation on this in the gtk+ or Gimp web sites. Thanks.
Some info... (Score:1)
Stephan