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If they want to stay in the Chinese office software market, the have to adopt Chinese standard. There are already three software providers making UOF compatible software, kingsoft's WPS, EIOffice and Open office based RedOffice (Chinese). Some of them are very good.

Here is the link ... it took me a while to find it: http://www.ch2000.com.cn/download/redownload/RedOf fice2.0_ForLinux.tar.gz

I am not Chinese and do not speak Chinese, however I am working in China and was trying to introduce Linux. The following text treats Chinese == simplified, however most of the stuff should be valid for traditional too.

First of all, Chinese under Linux is hell. There seem to be no people being interested in developing open source in China. And if they do then it's difficult to find, crappy and unfinished. Just look at the Mozilla 1.0 simplified Chinese translation, it's not there, the guys did not move since 0.9.8. The Chinese HOWTO is quite old (1998!) and most of the links are dead and the information inside useless (practical experience).

You have several alternatives, I suggest you forget about them: RedFlag Linux (Experience based on 3.0, Redflag 3.2 beta ISO)
I had to use the text installation: I guess it was unicode without unicode support, so all I saw was messy characters but not Chinese. Somehow it's similar to redhat so I was able to click through. After the installation: whoops, the system is asking me for my registration key otherwise I can try RedFlag linux for 40 days (? do not remember how many exactly). It was not just a key, it was one of the Microsoft dimensions. After choosing the trial I ended up in Kde trying to look like windows. It had a tray, and a start bar, the Control Panel and so on. But I had a feeling it was there but it could not satisfy me, and I could not stand the little penguin patriotically holding that red flag up. The Chinese input seems to me to be the most advanced, but the system it self seemed to me unstable. Most modifications were in the interface and trying to lock down the system so you need to get that key after the trial period.

Office: RedOffice different company, same red. It's OpenOffice 1.0 looking like Office XP, that's all except there is no source code, no binaries, only a trial version and a price of 398RMB (~50US$) for the full version. Stick with Chinese OpenOffice.

Mandrake has in my opinion the best Chinese support. You only need to install it using the Chinese language. If you install it using English and then switch to Chinese you will have several problems, like you desktop disappearing etc. Do not use Unicode, use gb or big5 only, I was not able to see anything by switching to Unicode.

After the installation you should have a Chinese kde, Chinese Mozilla 0.9.8 and some more software in Chinese. The best input for simplified is Chinput, for Big5 Xcin and that's how Mandrake is doing it, if you use gb you will get Chinput by pressing Ctrl+Space and Xcin on a Big5 system.

Turbolinux seems to have taken over the Chinput project, therefore you will find no info on the net. They made an extension to Chinput called ZWinPro (ZWinPro-3.2-11.i586.rpm) you need to forceinstall it (solve some libary deps, install unicon but do not uninstall Chinput) and forceinstall Mandrakes Chinput again. This will give you Mandrakes Chinput with a configuration toolbar and some binaries which allow you to use Chinese input for all applications. There are some minor probs you will need to fix (font alias missing, etc), if you have trouble contact me.

The only problem about Chinput (and probably Xcin) is: it's dumb, the windows input tries to guess what you are typing. Means, you need to write character by character on Linux, does not matter if you use Pinyin or Woubi (or what ever you call it). This is very unconvenient and a killer for every Chinese linux desktop. Nobody will want to type 10 min on Linux when he can be finished in 2 on windows.

Next get the Chinese version of OpenOffice1.0 and English Mozilla 1.0. If you want to use a Chinese browser stick to konqueror, Mozilla 0.9.8 is not stable and crashes randomly.

You will want to get some Chinese ttf fonts from windows, as the fonts on Mandrake are quite ugly.

paul

from a chinese company called "linux2000". the site is in chinese only, so are the interface and instruction of the installation (the help files are not yet translated tho), but if you can read chinese or are feeling advanturous, here's the rpm package for linux(for redhat) and here's the zip version for windoze.

I do not see source code packages anywhere on the site, which bothers me a little, so I went to read the license agreements on openoffice. There're two licenses you can choose, LGPL and SISSL. It seems that SISSL doesn't require the vendor to opensource their mods as long as the files produced remains fully compatible with what openoffice produces. If my understanding is wrong, I'd appreciate it if somebody could clear it up for me. As much as I would like openoffice based products to succeed in China, I would hate it if there's foul play here.

I should also point out that these programs are said to be "trial versions" which should expire on June 30, 2002, but later version should be available (for free, I suppose?) before then.

from a chinese company called "linux2000". the site is in chinese only, so are the interface and instruction of the installation (the help files are not yet translated tho), but if you can read chinese or are feeling advanturous, here's the rpm package for linux(for redhat) and here's the zip version for windoze.

I do not see source code packages anywhere on the site, which bothers me a little, so I went to read the license agreements on openoffice. There're two licenses you can choose, LGPL and SISSL. It seems that SISSL doesn't require the vendor to opensource their mods as long as the files produced remains fully compatible with what openoffice produces. If my understanding is wrong, I'd appreciate it if somebody could clear it up for me. As much as I would like openoffice based products to succeed in China, I would hate it if there's foul play here.

I should also point out that these programs are said to be "trial versions" which should expire on June 30, 2002, but later version should be available (for free, I suppose?) before then.

from a chinese company called "linux2000". the site is in chinese only, so are the interface and instruction of the installation (the help files are not yet translated tho), but if you can read chinese or are feeling advanturous, here's the rpm package for linux(for redhat) and here's the zip version for windoze.

I do not see source code packages anywhere on the site, which bothers me a little, so I went to read the license agreements on openoffice. There're two licenses you can choose, LGPL and SISSL. It seems that SISSL doesn't require the vendor to opensource their mods as long as the files produced remains fully compatible with what openoffice produces. If my understanding is wrong, I'd appreciate it if somebody could clear it up for me. As much as I would like openoffice based products to succeed in China, I would hate it if there's foul play here.

I should also point out that these programs are said to be "trial versions" which should expire on June 30, 2002, but later version should be available (for free, I suppose?) before then.