mdv@comtst.UUCP (Mike Verstegen) (06/07/90)
We are planning to convert an existing multi-national application from a character based environment to X. We currently use PCs running a a terminal emulator on top of a special graphics package that interprest 2 bytes sequences as a single Chinese character (called the "Big-5 code"). We don't have access to the fonts in these PCs, only the ability to display selected characters. Additonally, the key codes are grabbed and specially processed to allow the input of Chinese characters using one of several methods (which I believe are phonic and pictographically based). We are currently running X11R3 on ISC 3.2 which does not include any Chinese fonts, though I have heard that R4 was supposed to have Chinese. I cannot verify this on our system obviously. I would like to know from those of you with infinite knowledge and experience with X and access to R4... 1) Does X11R4 have Chinese fonts? Please note that this is NOT the same as the Japanese Katakana characters. 2) If the fonts are not part of the standard distribution, are they avaiable anywhere else? 3) Is there any support anywhere for the input of Chinese characters under X? The methods used usually involve toggling the character set to be entered (English/ASCII), then selecting a mode of Chinese input (phonetic, etc), then one keystroke "pops up" a list characters (usually a single line of 2 to 9 in the lower left corner of the screen), the next keystroke either selects one of those characters, or pops up another row... until the character is fully selected (usually 2 to 4 keystokes). The selected character (which is two bytes) is then returned to the calling read(). 4) Has anyone had any experience with the load on the server when using languages with large character sets (such as Chinese or Japanese)? I am guessing that a larger amount of server memory would be required to hold all the fonts for 15,000 possible characters. In a 24 by 24 cell (which we are currently using) that's over a megabyte. Is this a correct extrapolation, or are fonts loaded on the fly? We plan to use X-terminals for some users, so memory requirements are a big concern. Thanks for you assistance. Please reply by mail since I'll be back on the road shortly. Mail will be forwared to me, but news won't. I'll summarize responses if there is any interest. MDV
mouse@SHAMASH.MCRCIM.MCGILL.EDU (der Mouse) (06/10/90)
> I would like to know from those of you with infinite knowledge and > experience with X and access to R4... Hm, well, perhaps I'll do instead.... > 1) Does X11R4 have Chinese fonts? Please note that this is NOT the > same as the Japanese Katakana characters. R4 has a Japanese font which includes hiragana, katakana, and kanji. Obviously Chinese characters are not the same as Japanese kana, but would a kanji font do, or did you mean to write "kanji" where you wrote "katakana"? > 2) If the fonts are not part of the standard distribution, are they > avaiable anywhere else? The font of which I speak is on the R4 tape, in mit/fonts/bdf/misc/k14.bdf. > 3) Is there any support anywhere for the input of Chinese characters > under X? There is kterm, a terminal emulator designed for use with Japanese. Obviously, it has to have some way of typing kanji on a keyboard labeled with a basically Latin alphabet. I don't know details, though from what I've seen written about such systems I would expect the user to type romaji and then the system will effectively generate a menu of the likely kanji, with some sort of escape for entering the unlikely ones. I don't know enough about the various transcription methods of Chinese into alphabetic writing systems, but presumably something similar could be done for Chinese, given a well-defined romanization. I'm not certain where to get kterm; presumably it can be gotten from expo with ftp, though I must admit I haven't tried doing so. > 4) Has anyone had any experience with the load on the server when > using languages with large character sets (such as Chinese or > Japanese)? Not me, though I would like to get kterm working here soon. > Please reply by mail since I'll be back on the road shortly. Mail > will be forwared to me, but news won't. Unfortunately you didn't sign with an address. I'll try to mail to an address derived from the header, but I'm also posting in the hope that it will do some good. der Mouse old: mcgill-vision!mouse new: mouse@larry.mcrcim.mcgill.edu
rick@hanauma.stanford.edu (Richard Ottolini) (06/10/90)
>> 1) Does X11R4 have Chinese fonts? Please note that this is NOT the >> same as the Japanese Katakana characters. I thought X11R4 had several GuoBiao fonts (mainland ordering, simplified). There were no indexes or client software. Apple computer uploaded a one syllable pinyin index to soc.culture.china a few months ago. A bdf font and pinyin index are in anonymous ftp 36.51.0.16. Pinyin indexes are less satisfying to native users of Chinese than shape-based indexes. GuoBiao fonts are less satisfying to non-mainland Chinese. Most of the computerized activity seems to be in the IBM PC world rather than UNIX.
steven@pacific.csl.uiuc.edu (Steven Parkes) (06/11/90)
In article <9006100105.AA16716@shamash.McRCIM.McGill.EDU>, mouse@SHAMASH.MCRCIM.MCGILL.EDU (der Mouse) writes: |> |> > 3) Is there any support anywhere for the input of Chinese characters |> > under X? |> |> There is kterm, a terminal emulator designed for use with Japanese. |> Obviously, it has to have some way of typing kanji on a keyboard |> labeled with a basically Latin alphabet. I don't know details, though Actually, no, kterm doesn't have an input mechanism. There is one, however, called Wnn that is also bundled in with R4. I don't know how it interfaces with kterm but it does have an interface with the japanese gnu-emacs. There is also mlterm (multi-language term) that does have some support for chinese and japanese, but now I'm the one that doesn't know the details. steven parkes --------------------------------------- University of Illinois Coordinated Science Laboratory steven@pacific.csl.uiuc.edu -------------------------
IIIG014@TWNMOE10.BITNET (Chih-Chung Ko) (06/14/90)
> 2) If the fonts are not part of the standard ..... > 3) Is there any support anywhere for the input of Chinese char ..... As far as I know, there are three implementations that support Chinese fonts and character input in Taiwan now. The first is the Chinese X Window System from SEED Project of III, the second comes from SUN and the third comes from HP. > 4) Has anyone had any experience with the load on the server when using > language with large character sets ..... We need more memory to load Chinese character font, that's right. Chih-Chung Ko System Engineering Division, Institute for Information 3rd Fl 293-3 Fu-Hsing S Rd Sec 2 Taipei Taiwan R.O.C. E-mail: iiig014%twnmoe10.bitnet@mitvma.mit.edu