This is part of The Pile, a partial archive of some open source mailing lists and newsgroups.
Subject: Japanese support (in english) From: tzf@tzf.net Date: Thu, 21 Dec 2000 21:20:03 -0800 Hi y'all; anyone know about japanese language support in linux? I'm putting together a machine for my wife, a japanese person, and would like to avoid Japanese Microsoft. Been there, done that. Just opening up a japanese webpage with netscape with japanese support turned on works fine! But there's the old problem of text entry, along with other manipulations of japanese typefaces; like, when I had english version photoshop running under japanese windows, photoshop was unaware of the japanese typeface and therefore unable to manipulate japanese text. I'm assuming that linux is as beautiful and elegant when it comes to this stuff as it is with everything else I've tried to do with it. I just don't know where to start. What the heck is kterm (kanji terminal) and how the heck does it work? Since my japanese is VERY limited - especially my written japanese - I need to find resouces explaining this in ENGLISH. I've found many links and references that I believe to be how-to's in nihon-go, but I can't read them. (yes, I'm learning but it's not a simple written language to pick up, now is it? === Subject: Re: Japanese support (in english) From: Markus Gutschke <markus@gutschke.com> Date: Thu, 21 Dec 2000 23:00:06 -800 anyone know about japanese language support in linux? I'm putting together > a machine for my wife, a japanese person, and would like to avoid Japanese > Microsoft. Been there, done that. First of all, try to install the Japanese version of whichever Linux distribution you decide to use. For instance, for Debian you would go to http://www.debian.or.jp/ Then stick the following line into /etc/apt/sources: deb http://www.jp.debian.org/debian-jp stable-jp main non-free contrib Using the Japanese distribution ensures that you already get access to a lot of programs that have been modified for the Japanese environment. I haven't checked, but I believe for Debian, you must select the "task-japanese" and the "language-env" packages to get basic support for Japanese. > Just opening up a japanese webpage with netscape with japanese support > turned on works fine! But there's the old problem of text entry, along > with other manipulations of japanese typefaces; like, when I had english > version photoshop running under japanese windows, photoshop was unaware of > the japanese typeface and therefore unable to manipulate japanese text. Not all programs can deal with double byte characters. So don't expect that everything will just magically work. Things that are relatively easy to get to work are Netscape, XEmacs, and terminal emulation. I believe, you should also be able to get the text console and your shell to understand Kanji. Also, there are Japanese versions of common UNIX tools (e.g. sed, awk, ...), but I am not sure where I saw those. Recent versions of perl understand Unicode, and you can use JCode to add support for Kanji. Java always had fairly decent support for Kanji. As far as input methods go, there are whole bunch of them. As I don't know any Japanese myself, I could not give you any recommendations. I understand that most (all?) input methods make you enter the Japanese characters the way that they would be transliterated in Roman characters. It then looks up all matching Japanese characters and allows you to cycle through them (usually by pressing the space bar). I suspect that input methods differ for Kanji, Hiragana and Katakana (sp?), but I really have no way of telling. The one thing that I had the biggest problems with was getting Ghostscript to work with Japanese fonts (especially, trying to print from Netscape). It took me quite a while as there was very little good English documentation on how to set this up. I eventually found the solution. The fonts don't look perfect, but they are fairly decent. I can send you more information when I am back from vacation in January. Also, you might try to set up TeX. I believe, it has pretty good support for Japanese, but I haven't tried this myself. > Since my japanese is VERY limited - especially my written japanese - I need > to find resouces explaining this in ENGLISH. I've found many links and > references that I believe to be how-to's in nihon-go, but I can't read > them. (yes, I'm learning but it's not a simple written language to pick up, > now is it? As I said, I don't know any Japanese (I just happened to have looked into how to enable a Japanese environment under Linux), so any questions that you could ask will very quickly end up just confusing me ;-) But you could try connecting the Linux User's group in Tokyo http://www.tlug.gr.jp/ They maintain an English mailing list for people like you and me who have difficulties reading a Japanese HOWTO document. === Subject: Re: Japanese support (in english) From: "Ken NISHIMURA" <ken-ni@ascii.co.jp> Date: Thu, 21 Dec 2000 23:42:52 -0800 Hi there, I'm a Japanese Linuxer from Tokyo, staying in SF. I've started subscribing this ML recently. At Thu, 21 Dec 2000 21:20:03 -0800, tzf@tzf.net wrote: > Just opening up a japanese webpage with netscape with japanese > support turned on works fine! But there's the old problem of text > entry, along with other manipulations of japanese typefaces; like, > when I had english version photoshop running under japanese windows, > photoshop was unaware of the japanese typeface and therefore unable > to manipulate japanese text. Does your ~/.Xresources have lines something like below? Netscape*international: True Netscape*inputMethod: kinput2 Netscape*fontList:\ -adobe-helvetica-medium-r-*-*-12-*-*-*-*-*-iso8859-1;\ -misc-fixed-medium-r-normal--12-*-*-*-*-*-jisx0208.1983-0;\ -misc-fixed-medium-r-normal--12-*-*-*-*-*-jisx0201.1976-0: If your(or your wife) want(s) to input certain amount of Japanese text with browsers, you better try Mozilla or Netscape6. Communicator4.x has obvious bug(or big problem) handling Japanese characters. Even if you can see the correct Japanese characters you type in the text box, they'll disappear as soon as you hit the enter key. Myself, I usually use Communicator4.73 with Kinput2. Since I can type only one line with the commbination, I use w3m on kterm instead when I have to type Japanese text a lot. W3m is a lynx like text browser, quite popular among Japanese Linux users. http://ei5nazha.yz.yamagata-u.ac.jp/~aito/w3m/eng/ > What the heck is kterm (kanji terminal) and how the heck does it work? Kterm is a superset terminal of xterm so that you can regard it as a little bit bigger xterm. Well, what else...? === Subject: Re: Japanese support (in english) From: "Ken NISHIMURA" <ken-ni@ascii.co.jp> Date: Fri, 22 Dec 2000 00:34:38 -0800 Hi, At Thu, 21 Dec 2000 23:00:06 -800, Markus Gutschke <markus@gutschke.com> wrote: > First of all, try to install the Japanese version of whichever > Linux distribution you decide to use. For instance, for Debian > you would go to http://www.debian.or.jp/ Then stick the following > line into /etc/apt/sources: > > deb http://www.jp.debian.org/debian-jp stable-jp main non-free contrib Now those Japanese(also Korean, Chinese etc) packages have been merged with the original Debian2.2. So you don't have to care about the source you download from. You can simply type $ apt-get kterm without modifing your /etc/apt/sources, if you are using Debian2.2. Another choice I can think of, except Debian, is ``Kondara MNU/Linux''. It supports both English and Japanese environment fairly well(perhaps Korean and Italian, too). You can change the two environments without logging off. Kondara is one of derivative of RedHat and able to take advantage of RPM packages. I heard that they just started to sell the distribution here in the US. > As far as input methods go, there are whole bunch of them. As I > don't know any Japanese myself, I could not give you any > recommendations. Canna is fine. ``ATOK for Linux'' is the best(commercial program). > I understand that most (all?) input methods make you enter the > Japanese characters the way that they would be transliterated in > Roman characters. It then looks up all matching Japanese characters > and allows you to cycle through them (usually by pressing the space > bar). I suspect that input methods differ for Kanji, Hiragana and > Katakana (sp?), but I really have no way of telling. You've almost got a picture. > The one thing that I had the biggest problems with was getting > Ghostscript to work with Japanese fonts (especially, trying to print > from Netscape). It took me quite a while as there was very little > good English documentation on how to set this up. I eventually found > the solution. The fonts don't look perfect, but they are fairly > decent. I can send you more information when I am back from vacation > in January. PostScript, PDF, printing... Printing Japanese characters on Linux is rather troublesome, so I simply use Win2k in VMware. === Subject: Re: Japanese support (in english) From: Deirdre Saoirse <deirdre@deirdre.net> Date: Fri, 22 Dec 2000 10:25:57 -0800 (PST) On Thu, 21 Dec 2000 tzf@tzf.net wrote: > anyone know about japanese language support in linux? I'm putting > together a machine for my wife, a japanese person, and would like to > avoid Japanese Microsoft. Been there, done that. My eldest stepson used TurboLinux for his major in Japanese. I haven't really asked him specific questions about it. He found, as you have, that MS stuff with Japanese didn't work very well (especially for a non-native speaker, but that's another kettle of fish). I don't know if he had any additional help at the time frankly. === Subject: Re: Japanese support (in english) From: tzf@tzf.net Date: Fri, 22 Dec 2000 14:38:34 -0800 At 12:34 AM 12/22/00 -0800, Ken NISHIMURA wrote: ... >PostScript, PDF, printing... Printing Japanese characters on Linux is >rather troublesome, so I simply use Win2k in VMware. ok, so I tried it just for fun... printed an asahi.com article, and it comes out in ascii characters... all the weird ones. Kana/ kanji only for graphics (bitmapped) characters. since i'm trying to set up my linux box as a samba printserver for the windows thing, do you know if printing from a nihon-go windows (via samba) will have similar problems? I expect it would... also, know if the Gimp supports ... double-byte characters? unicode? hmmm, a general reference on double-byte charaters, unicode, differences and similarities (or are they identical? ) would be most helpful. Know of any good reading on the subject (in english, of course)? === Subject: Re: Japanese support (in english) From: Michael Higashi <mhigashi@digitalflock.org> Date: Fri, 22 Dec 2000 16:23:51 -0800 begin tzf@tzf.net quotation: > > hmmm, a general reference on double-byte charaters, unicode, differences > and similarities (or are they identical? ) would be most helpful. Know of > any good reading on the subject (in english, of course)? Have you tried going to Google's preferences page, setting your language to English, then going to www.google.com/linux to search for your subjects? With that technique, I find Markus Kuhn's UTF-8 and Unicode FAQ for Unix/Linux: http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/unicode.html === Subject: Re: Japanese support (in english) From: "Ken NISHIMURA" <ken-ni@ascii.co.jp> Date: Sun, 24 Dec 2000 02:03:55 -0800 Hi, At Fri, 22 Dec 2000 14:38:34 -0800, tzf@tzf.net wrote: > since i'm trying to set up my linux box as a samba printserver for > the windows thing, do you know if printing from a nihon-go windows > (via samba) will have similar problems? I expect it would... No problem at all. Because what you can print just depends on the printer driver which is installed in each Windows. Samba provides nothing but a normal network printer that works the same as Win2k. > also, know if the Gimp supports ... double-byte characters? unicode? Basically, gimp doesn't support Japanese characters but there's a patch for Japanese extension. You can use Japanese characters(maybe truetype as well) only if the gimp is compiled with Japanese patch correctly. But I'm afraid most gimps available in binary format are not... Even my gimp doesn't support Japanese. I've never tried to compile it by myself. > hmmm, a general reference on double-byte charaters, unicode, > differences and similarities (or are they identical? ) would be most > helpful. Know of any good reading on the subject (in english, of > course)? Sorry, but I've never looked for English information... === Subject: Japanese Support in Linux From: Craig Oda <craigoda@turbolinux.com> Date: Sun, 24 Dec 2000 09:22:50 -0800 (PST) Hello, I have a very old home page at http://tlug.linux.or.jp/craigoda/writings/linux-nihongo The information is about 3 years old. However, it might be useful for basic info on Linux internationalization. Turbolinux 6.1 workstation pro (English) fully supports Japanese. The core of the product is the same product sold in Japan. If you select Japanese at time of install everything should be in Japanese. It should be available at ftp.turbolinux.com Say, I'm subscribed to the digest of this mailing list. Is there any way to thread this digest as mime attachments so that every message is a seperate attachment? Regards, Craig > On Thu, 21 Dec 2000 tzf@tzf.net wrote: > > > anyone know about japanese language support in linux? I'm putting > > together a machine for my wife, a japanese person, and would like to > > avoid Japanese Microsoft. Been there, done that. > > My eldest stepson used TurboLinux for his major in Japanese. I haven't > really asked him specific questions about it. He found, as you have, that > MS stuff with Japanese didn't work very well (especially for a non-native > speaker, but that's another kettle of fish). I don't know if he had any > additional help at the time frankly. ===