Reading/Writing Chinese Using Linux?

Rimbo asks: "I'm building a computer for a friend, who has three major requirements from his system: He wants an Athlon with a 333MHz FSB, he wants absolutely no Microsoft software anywhere near it, and he needs the ability to read and edit Chinese. I imagine Red Flag Linux has great Chinese support, but is it as easy to use as a desktop OS as Mandrake or Red Hat? How easy is Chinese text editing and entry under the major distributions? What "office" software for Linux is good for editing Chinese? Thanks!"

Comments

Chinese Patch for Redhat

[brunes69]

Check out .

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Yangchunbaixue KDE Chinese Environment or YKCE is a hybridly licensed software that turns Red Hat Linux 7.1 into a sophisticated Chinese KDE desktop environment.

Re:I have a client who is Japanese..

[metalogic]

... this tiny bar that sits at the corner of your screen and lets you flip back and forth between English and several other character sets.

It is called xcin in Linux land.

... I am highly doubtful that Linux developers can come up with anything better.

Another FUD attempt. Do you have no shame?

As it stands, I believe your friend's decision to not use Microsoft products may be a bit short-sighted, especially considering that this is one of my client's only reasons to switch to Windows from MacOS.

No; I believe those who decided to use Microsoft products to be short-sighted.

Microsoft needs to be destroyed.

Re:I have a client who is Japanese..

[FreeUser]

Which part of he wants absolutely no Microsoft software anywhere near it didn't you understand?

Shilling Microsoft solutions in answer to an article asking specifically how to do something without Microsoft software is not only offtopic, it is insulting to the intelligence of any reader not in the partisan throes of the pro-microsoft zealotry camp.

Now, I'm not saying that there isn't something similar for Linux. But if Apple couldn't come up with anything more productive for MacOS 9, which was intended from the start to be a consumer-level, desktop, OS, I am highly doubtful that Linux developers can come up with anything better.

So basically you are using your ignorance of GNU/Linux as an excuse for posting an offtopic response promoting your partisan software when in fact the only cognizant answer you could have possibly given would have been "I don't know."

Indeed, even a fraction of research on your part would have allowed for a slightly more intelligent answer than "use Microsoft, it kicks Apple's ass and GNU/Linux can't possibly be any better than Apple, so it must suck!", for perhaps then you might have stumbled across the Linux Chinese HOWTO.

Interestingly enough, both the Chinese and Taiwanese governments do not share your pessimism ... both are using and promoting GNU/Linux and discouraging further use of Microsoft Windows, and while it may or may not be as polished as Microsoft's Japanese IME implimentations, it should be noted that (a) Japanese' use of Kanji aside, Japanese isn't remotely the same as Chinese and (b) the Freedom (both financial and otherwise) afforded by using a Free operating system such as GNU/Linux, and actively taken away by submitting to a Microsoft based solution, vastly outweighs any amount of polish Microsoft could possibly offer.

Re:I have a client who is Japanese..

[Broccolist]

I agree, Microsoft's CJK IME absolutely reigns over all. It's unified across most Windows applications, uses a very smart heuristic based on word frequency and grammar analysis (!), is highly configurable and even provides a box to draw characters with your mouse if you've forgotten their reading (which, amazingly, gives the correct result 99% of the time, even if I draw it really sloppily).

I use it for my Japanese text editing and I was extremely impressed by the quality of their IME. I'm no big fan of MS in general, but I have to say that this is one place where their software is simply Right. I try to avoid using Japanese in unix so I haven't explored all the possibilities there, but the solutions I've seen have been comparatively weak and ad hoc. This is one place where Linux might have to catch up to MS, but they'll never do better.