KuaiXue Chinese Teaching Tool for Windows, Version 1.0 Manual, by Joel Chen Index ------- 1. Introduction 2. Installing KXWin 3. Running KXWin 4. Using KXWin a. Opening and Closing Files b. Switching Between Chinese Encoding Modes c. Switching Betweeen Fonts (Face and Size) d. Turning On/Off Viewing Options e. Using Bookmarks f. Looking Up a Chinese Character and Compound 5. About the ShengZi File 6. About the Dictionaries 7. About the Fonts 8. Creating and Specifying Your Own Fonts 9. Editing kxwin.in 1. Introduction KXWin was originally developed by Dr. Norman Matloff, a professor in the Computer Science Department of the University of California at Davis. This software can look up English translations and pronounciations of Chinese characters electionically, which is much faster than doing it by hand, therefore speeding up the learning process tremendously. In addition, all the characters the user looks up saved to a file for review purposes. Although this software is intended for intermediate Chinese learners, it may prove to be useful for the beginners also. This version, a modification which runs under Microsoft Windows 3.1 and above, was written by Joel Chen. If you are interested, there is also a version available for X-Windows, running under the Unix environment. KuaiXue (KX) is the name of the software family, with the Microsoft Windows and Unix versions being called KXWin and kxterm, respectively. Dr. Matloff's original DOS version was called KX. KX is free software. You may copy and give it to other people provided that all original files are included; you may use it freely for educational purposes only. The development of KX was supported by a grant from the federal Department of Education. 2. Installing KXWin I. Create a directory \kxwin on whichever drive you choose to install KXWin, and another directory \shengzi to hold the output of KXWin. (You need not create these directories as immediate subdirectories of the root; if you create them elsewhere, make sure to modify the appropriate entries in kxwin.ini accordingly, in the DictDir, ShengziDir and FontDir entries.) II. Move all the files from kxwin.zip (from which you obtained this instruction file) to \kxwin. III. Make any other modifications to kxwin.ini you wish (its original settings specify BIG5 Chinese character coding and fantizi, i.e. traditional character fonts), and then copy the file to \windows (or wherever your PC's main Windows directory is). 3. Starting KXWin Start KXWin as you would any other Windows program. It is not advised that you run more than one invocation of KXWin at a time, since the shengzi file would be shared among them. 4. Using KXWin a. Opening and Closing Files Pull down the menu File with the mouse and select the option. b. Switching Between Chinese Encoding Modes KXWin supports three different Chinese encoding schemes, Big5, GB and HZ. When you open a new file, KXWin will automatically switch to the appropriate mode according to the extension in the file name: .hz => switch to HZ mode .gb => switch to GB mode .b5 or .big => switch to Big5 mode all others => switch to ASCII mode (no Chinese decoding) If you need to switch mode manually, pull down the menu View and choose the mode you want. c. Switching Between Chinese Fonts (Face and Size) KXWin supports both traditional Chinese face types (fantizi) and simplified fonts (jiantizi). You can switch between them by pulling down the View menu. In addition to the face type, KXWin also supports two different sizes of Chinese characters. This feature was implemented mainly because as a Chinese teaching tool, KXWin must ensure that the user can recognize the strokes of each Chinese character clearly. The two sizes are 16x16 and 24x24. If you are using 800 by 600 resolution, 16 by 16 fonts should be rather clear. However, if you are using 1024 by 768 and above resolutions, things can look tiny, in which case you may want to use 24x24 fonts. To switch the font size, pull down the menu Font Size and pick one. A note about the 24x24 fonts: If the resolution you are using is less than 960 pixels wide, you won't be able to see the usual 40 columns of Chinese text: 24 pixels/char * 40 chars = 960 pixels. Sorry, there is no horizontal scrolling. d. Turning On/Off Viewing Options To customize KXWin to your taste, there are two viewing options you can turn on and off, Track Scroll and Show HZ Escape Code. Both can be found at the end of the menu View if you pull it down. If you have a fast computer and video card, you probably want Track Scroll. If this option is on, the text will move as you move the box inside the scroll bars. On the other hand, if the scrolling is sluggish, you may want to turn this option off. For the Show HZ... option, you can uncheck it if those tilde marks ("~{" and "~}") in the HZ files bother you. e. Using Bookmarks KXWin's bookmark feature lets you stop in the middle of a file and return to the same point later. If you want to save the current position of the file, just pull down the menu and choose Save Bookmark. The next time you view the file, choose Goto Bookmark from the Bookmark pop-up menu. f. Looking Up a Chinese Character and Compound This, of course, is the main feature of KXWin. If any Chinese character on the screen looks unfamiliar to you, simply point your mouse cursor to that character and click the left button of your mouse. That's it. The translation and pronounciation will appear in the bottom part of the window. In addition, KX will do its best to locate any compounds which contain the character you clicked and display them. The line which contains the character you clicked will be saved to a file shengzi. where encoding is "hz", "gb", or "b5". For information on where this file is located, please read the next section. 5. About the ShengZi File To allow you to review the characters you clicked, all characters the user has previously looked up are saved in a file, along with the translations and pronounciations. This file is called "shengzi." where encoding is "hz", "gb", or "b5" without the '<' and '>'. This file will be created within the \shengzi directory, unless you didn't specify a directory for the field ShengZiDir inside the initialization file kxwin.ini, in which case the current directory will be used. When you open and close a file, KXWin will put the following two lines into the shengzi file, respectively: **** New File: **** Close file: All the queried lookups will be recorded between these two lines. Whenever you click on a character on a new line, KXWin will write the line to the shengzi file. Then it will write all of the results of the queried lookups from the same line to the file until you click on a different line. Then it will start from the beginning of this process again. 6. About the Dictionaries The single Chinese charater dictionary which contains the pronounciations and translations is called "canman." The compound dictionary is called "compound." This file has been compiled by Joel Chen, Zoe Lui, John Xu, Noah Chiu and Norman Matloff. Each entry has been cross-checked by at least one person other than the original translator. However, no guarantee is made as to the accuracy of this dictionary. 7. About the Fonts KXWin uses Chinese characters converted from HBF bitmaps to windows FON formats, using the converter written by Tiang Bogang. By doing so, KXWin is using the Windows' font engine directly instead of having to draw each Chinese character manually. There are many advantages and virtually no significant disadvantages. Two key advantages are speed and compatibility. The original bitmap fonts are acquired from the Chinese software site ftp.ifcss.org, and thus are assumed to be public domain; if you know this not to be the case, please send e-mail to matloff@cs.ucdavis.edu All of the Big5 fonts are converted from the bitmap fonts from the software KC, which is a freely available software. An extra set of 16x16 FanTi fonts for Big5 is also included because the characters are nice. This is created and copyrighted by UnionWay. By default, KXWin will not use this font. If you would like to use this font, remove the ';' from the line which specifies this font in kxwin.ini; also put a ';' in front of the line which specifies the 16x16 FanTi KC font. The origins of the GB fonts are a little scattered. The 16x16 JianTi font ch16.fon is in WAY3100 from Mr Wang Wei. The GB 16x16 FanTi, 24x24 Jian/Fan Ti fonts are converted from the public domain fonts: GBF16, CCS24 and CCF24. 8. Creating and Specifying Your Own Fonts Creating your own font can be a bit tricky. You need to know the encoding specifications. Some bitmap fonts do not have blanks to fill the gaps which are the space of unused codes. In this case, you will need to find the gap. KXWin allows you to specify four fonts each for GB and Big5. The four fonts are 16x16 Jian/Fan Ti and 24x24 Jian/Fan Ti. If you want KXWin to use a font of your own, you will have to specify it in kxwin.ini. The format is: Font=, , , <# of Fnts> Where * "Enc" is the encoding of the font: either GB or B5 * "siz" is the size of the font: either 16 or 24. ie. 16x16 * "FaceType" is either "JianTi" (simple Chinese) or "FanTi" (complex Chinese) * "filename" is the name of the file which contains the fonts. * "fontname" is the name of the font; Windows uses this name to refer to the fonts after they are loaded. The fontname will be appended with the index: _xx ie. ccs24_10 refers to the tenth font within the file. Don't specify the index (including the underbar). * "Gap" is whatever gap number you found for the font. This is tricky. To find out the gap number for a font, first put in a guess, and then run KXWin with an file whose contents you know. If the gap you gave is incorrect, you will see nonsense Chinese. So you will have to adjust the number until the Chinese is displayed correctly. To increase the gap number, press 'F'; to decrease the gap number, press 'B'. And to see the current Gap number, press 'D'. * "# of Fnts" is the number which indicates how many fonts are in the file to make up the entire set of Chinese characters. This is ensential because if you specify a lower number, KXWin will not load all the fonts in the file and so some Chinese characters will not be displayed. 9. Editing kxwin.ini Please refer to the lines begin with a ';' in file kxwin.ini for information.