Many operating system developers have localized their products to process Chinese internally. For example, Microsoft has localized its Windows family starting from Windows 3.x and both simplified (GB encoded) and traditional (BIG5 encoded) Chinese versions are available. Likewise, IBM, Apple Computer, and various Unix vendors have released localized versions of their operating systems. There is also a project in mainland China localizing Linux. Since these products are not generally available on the US market, nor is there a need for installing such an operating system on your computer unless you are a software developer for the locale, this page will only introduces you to some software products that provide some Chinese environment for processing Chinese under your English operating system, especially those freebies! Information on how to configure popular Internet browsers for reading Chinese is also provided at the end of this page.
Two most popular software for processing Chinese under various Unix environments are Cxterm and Mule.
This is the oldest virtual terminal that can display and input Chinese under X Window System. The last version, cxterm-5.0.p3, was released on August 8, 1995 and is available at the IFCSS FTP Site. A RedHat RPM version is also available at various Linux archive sites.
Cxterm can handle GB, BIG, and HZ codes. It is also bundled with a variety input methods (invoked by function keys). The Unix command "more" (but not "less") can display Chinese characters on the terminal. You can also type Chinese texts using the simple PICO editor. With PICO you can configure your e-mail programs such as elm or pine to send e-mail messages in Chinese.
MULE is an abbreviation of MULtilingual Enhancement to GNU Emacs (version 19). As a text editor, it can process many languages including Chinese (both simplified and traditional), Japanese, Korean, etc. Many input methods for various languages are included in the package. The last version, Mule-2.3, was released on July 25, 1995. Click here for various ftp sites. An RPM version is also available at various Linux archive sites.
Like Emacs, Mule is very configurable and you can set it up to process a particular supported language by default.
GNU Emacs 20 comes with Mule built-in starting. Please check the GNU site for details.
There are many many software products for displaying and/or typing Chinese on Microsoft Windows series (non-Chinese versions), but most of them are NOT free, although some developers provide trial and demo versions. These products fall into the following three (overlapping) categories:
Here is a list of popular products:
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Apple users, please read this document: Chinese on the Macintosh FAQ. :-)
OS/2 users, please read these two documents: How to Read Chinese, Korean, Japanese under OS/2 and Viewing Chinese in OS/2 revisited.
Below is a brief description on how to view Chinese texts within two popular Internet browsers on the assumption that none of the software products mentioned above is installed.
For Internet Explorer 4.01 (SP1), you must first perform some product updating, specifically, you must install Multilingual Support from Microsoft over the Internet. You can do so by clicking on "Product Updates" under "Help". This will lead you a Microsoft web page (depending your platform). Let the page perform the checking. When this is done, you can go to the bottom of the page and check whatever language support you desire. Following the instructions to download and install the add-on's. As always, you have to reboot the machine. After the machine reboots, you can go to View -> Fonts and switch to the desired encoding.
Internet Explorer 5.0 has changed the updating method. It is now pre-installed with a menu selection of various encodings (still under "View"). If a particular language support is not installed, clicking on it will start automatic downloading and installing. (It seems you no longer need to reboot the machine.)
A shortcut for Internet Explorer is that you can right-click anywhere on the page (as long as not on any hyperlink or image) and choose the desired encoding from the selection.
You can also download Microsoft Global IME for Simplified or Traditional Chinese, which will allow to type Chinese texts under Microsoft Outlook, Microsoft Outlook Express, and Internet Explorer. It does not work any other application, though you can paste the text you have entered on an OE message page and paste it to say Word and format it with an appropriate font.
Under the menu "View" on Netscape Communicator and Netscape Navigator, you will find a selection called Encoding or Character Set (depending on the version and platform). Move your mouse to the right and you will find one choice for simplified Chinese and two choices for traditional Chinese. However, you must do some configurations before you can successfully do co-switching. The first step is to have appropriate fonts installed. For Unix users, ask your system administrator. For Windows users, install Microsoft's Chinese language support for Internet Explorer as described above. The next step is to edit your preferences (under Edit) to associate appropriate fonts for a particular encoding, e.g. Fangsongti for GB 2312-80. You should be able to read Chinese texts after these two steps. Usually you have to manually select the encoding or character set when you are reading a web page with Chinese characters.
Specific information for Netscape users under Unix who want to read GB encoded pages can be found here.