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Reading/Writing Chinese Using Linux?

Posted by Cliff on from the but-my-mandarin-is-a-bit-rusty dept.

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!"

5 of 259 comments (clear)

  1. What about the hardware by Vought+28 · · Score: 0, Interesting

    I imagine that he also wants a traditional, Chinese keyboard for his computer. As the Chinese alphabet has over a thousand characters, he might need to have one custom built.

  2. What good IMEs are out there.. by Microlith · · Score: 2, Interesting

    And how the hell do you get them to work with most applications?

    The same issue for chinese exists for Korean and Japanese, and is one of my major reasons for NOT moving to linux.

    Windows et. al. have this issue down to nothing, I can use Japanese in every program installed on my PC (that has windows handle the UI), but basic input of Japanese into linux seems almost impossible.

    One site wanted me to recompile the kernel just to add the suport. Another wanted me to rebuild all of my system libraries.

    Multilingual support for Asian languages is severely lacking in Linux.

    And I've tried Turbolinux, and on boot into X I got FVWM. That's REAL advanced.

  3. Opera for Linux is focusing on China by linuxbaby · · Score: 2, Interesting
    Opera 6.02 for Linux Released - July 3, 2002

    Opera Software today continued its Linux Bonanza Week with a public release of Opera 6.02 for Linux. The new version includes important fixes to the document and user interface, with special emphasis on the display of Asian characters, making this an important upgrade for Linux users all over the world.

    More at: http://www.opera.com/pressreleases/en/2002/07/2002 0703_2.html

    and...

    Opera waves the red flag in China

    In China, the government has moved to install the open-source Linux operating system provided by Red Flag in an attempt to avoid reliance on U.S. companies, particularly Microsoft. The successful RedFlag formula will now be replicated in the embedded market.

    "After dominating the Chinese desktop market, RedFlag is now poised to move into the embeddded market," says Danny Huang, geveral manager embedded products, Redflag Software Technologies Co., Ltd. "With Opera on board as a partner, RedFlag now offers the very best in embedded systems solutions for the Chinese market."

    Press release here: http://www.opera.com/pressreleases/en/2002/07/2002 0701_2.html

  4. Microsoft wins on Chinese, but Japanese... by David+Jao · · Score: 2, Interesting
    You yourself admit that you haven't looked deeply into possible Linux solutions for Japanese input. I have found that skk with emacs in Linux is every bit as powerful, usable, and easy as anything Microsoft has to offer for Japanese input. Granted, it doesn't let you draw in a character, but I never use that anyway.

    Where linux may suffer a little bit is in the areas of printing and uniform input support across all applications (for example, skk only works in emacs). However, for writing Japanese-page php scripts, emacs is quite sufficient. Redhat 7.3 even includes skk by default, so you don't have to do anything special to install it.

    The story with Chinese is a little bit different ... I've been looking for about six years and I have not found anything in linux that matches the ease and comprehensiveness of Chinese language support in Windows 2000. So for anybody (such as the story poster) who is looking to handle Chinese in Linux: it can be done, but it is probably not as easy as in Windows.

  5. Get Mandrake and Open Office by pkretek · · Score: 2, Interesting
    Disclaimer

    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.

    Introduction

    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).

    Red alternatives

    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 8.2

    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