IFCSS FTP-INFO FAQ ftp://ftp.ifcss.org/ or http://www.ifcss.org/ I. How to ftp files? $ ftp ftp.ifcss.org ftp login: anonymous ftp password: your-email-address ftp> cd pub ftp> ls ftp> binary ftp> get filename ftp> bye For Mac, You'll need to download stuffit expander to extract the .hqx file. Check out /pub/software/mac/utils. For DOS/MS-Win, you may need pkunzip from /pub/software/mac/utils to unzip .zip files. For Unix, you need gzip or gunzip to unzip .gz files. II. Which Chinese Software Should I get? Get the catalogue file first from: ftp://ftp.ifcss.org/pub/software/catalogue or http://www.ifcss.org/ftp-pub/software/catalogue to find out which one is good for you. For basics of Chinese software, read the Chinese Software Primer at http://www.ifcss.org/software/ch-primer.html _________________________________________________________________ CHINESE SOFTWARE PRIMER _________________________________________________________________ BACKGROUND KNOWLEDGE 1. .gb, .hz and .b5 files and Chinese coding schemes. 2. What type of software do I need? 3. How do I write Chinese WHAT SOFTWARE SHOULD I USE FOR 1. Mac 2. MS-Windows 3. DOS 4. Web surfing UNIX/X-WINDOWS ARE SPECIAL 1. Netscape and Mosaic 2. MULE 3. CXTERM 4. Midaswww OTHER TRICKS 1. PC/Mac dialup 2. PC/Mac with X _________________________________________________________________ BACKGROUND KNOWLEDGE 1. .gb, .hz and .b5 files and Chinese coding schemes. The most popular coding schemes for HanZi (Chinese characters) are GB, Big5 and HZ. + GB (GuoBiao) is the coding standard in Mainland China, Singerpore and where simplified Chinese is used. + HZ is a variation of GB, designed/specified by several experts over the Internet, especially. Dr. Fung-Fung Lee, to circumvent the limitations imposed by conventional Internet email and Usenet systems. + Big5 is the de facto coding standard in Taiwan, Hong Kong and where traditional Chinese characters are used. But don't be fooled by the seeming coorelation between GB and simplified characters (JianTi) -- you can input and print traditional characters (FanTi) if your software has FanTi fonts. Chinese files in these coding schems usually have names with, respectively .gb, .hz and .b5 (or .big) suffices. You can often work with only one kind of files whereas many recent software packages support all of them. 2. What Type of Chinese Software Do I Need? 1. Chinese capable applications, such as Chinese word processors. The Netscape patch adding Chinese capability, which is available in our archive, also belongs to this catergory. 2. Chinese environments running on top of existing ASCII/English operating systems. 3. Chinese operating systems. They are usually solded in Chinese speaking countries or to professionals elsewhere. For these users, Chinese capability is the most important thing. For most people in non-Chinese speaking countries, Chinese environments are the most appropriate because beside giving you the read, write and print abilities as Chinese operating systems do, they allow you to switch back to the native language of your operating system. This primer emphasis on this type of software. 3. How do I write Chinese? Grind your own ink, hold the brush straight, and write in collumns from right to left! Yes, writing is this difficult. Most people use phonetic based Pin1Yin1 and BoPoMoFo input methods. For fast input, you got to use WuBi (for simplified characters) and ChangJie (for traditional characters), which use key sequences basing on the stroke and other features of characters. See the tutorials in the data directory of our software area. _________________________________________________________________ WHAT SOFTWARE SHOULD I USE FOR The type number of the software is defined above. 1. Mac typeGBHZBig5Comment and where to get Mac Chinese System3yny sold by Apple Mac Chinese Kit2ynyupgrade kit from this site MacHZ, MacViewHZ2yadd-ons to the above two, freeware from this site MS-Windows typeGBHZBig5Comment and where to get C-Windows3yny sold by Microsoft, Taiwan P-Windows3yny sold by Microsoft, China UnionWay402yyyvery easy to install, demo from this site TwinBridge2yyydemo from this site Ch-Star2yyysold in China DOS typeGBHZBig5Comment and where to get CC-DOS3ynn Most popular in China ETEN3nny Most popular in Taiwan zWDOS2nynpopular over Internet, shareware from this site Web surfing You can always elect to have the .gb, .hz and .b5 (.big) files downloaded to your computer before viewing them. To display the files on the screen, you have to tell your WWW browser to display them instead of download them. And if you use Netscape, Mosaic or whatever under any Mac or MS-Windows based Chinese environments or operating systems, you have to change the default fonts to the Chinese fonts. _________________________________________________________________ UNIX/X-WINDOWS ARE SPECIAL This often means you are out of luck as regular users. Unix machines have not been good to provide graphic user interfaces. But programmers and technical people love them. So, you will find more applications which do not require graphic sscreens, such for file conversions and the fancy TeX, available for unix machines. I assume many of the unix computer vendors, such as IBM, DEC and Sun, sell some kind of Chinese operating systems in Taiwan and China. These operating systems are not widely used, to say the least. There are two limited environment type of packages supporting Chinese, MULE and CXTERM, which only provide Chinese environment within the particular windows they open up. You can work on Chinese when you use any application that runs within those windows. But applications such as Netscape won't work in them. Luckily, the newer versions of Netscape and the patched version of Mosaic understand Chinese code. To use them, you only have to install the Chinese fonts (see below). Below shows you some examples of how to do WWW browsing under Unix/X-Windows. 1. Netscape and Mosaic + Check out the localized Mosaic + The newer versions (2.0 or above) of Netscape support Chinese. You only need to install the BDF fonts for X-Windows from this site according to the instructions and select the Chinese fonts in tthe "option" menu. Use the BDF/CNS fonts for Big5. 2. MULE + Multilingual GNU emacs enhancement Mule + w3 mode; or + Gnu-emacs + w3-mode + xhzview + a small patch of elisp codes. 3. CXTERM + cxterm + lynx or line mode browser; + Need HZ support, + hztty 4. Midaswww _________________________________________________________________ OTHER TRICKS Sometimes you have PC/Mac without chinese system, but you can connect to a Unix. You can use the Unix instead of install a chinese system. It's simple too. 1. PC/Mac dialups + MS-Windows: Spterm -> campus/company Internet server + Mac: MacBlue -> campus/company Internet server 2. PC/Mac with X You have to install cxterm on your host (X application/client machine). + Micro X (PC) + cxterm (Host). + Mac X (Mac) + cxterm (Host). _________________________________________________________________ If you have other ideas, please drop us a message. Dong-Ping Deng, Yuan Jiang and Ruwen Jin ©