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

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.