Manfred Kuechler
Hunter College

(Last update: Nov 18, 1999)

Displaying Chinese/Japanese/Korean documents in Netscape

 
Note for MS IE 5 users (added June 19, 2000):
If you are running Win98 on your station, MS IE 5 was installed as part of the Windows OS. Comprehensive Asian language (display, print, and input) can be downloaded for free from the Microsoft site; and the same holds for Hebrew. In MS IE, go to "Tools"/"Windows Update" and select the langugage modules you are interested in. You can use the Asian fonts so installed to also expand Netscape's functionality as described further below. Though, currently, Netscape does not offer support for  the Hebrew "character set" or "code page" -- necessary to utilize a Hebrew font. If you want to read Israeli newspapers in Hebrew, you need to stay with MS IE 5.

Given Hunter's emphasis on multiculturalism, we should be able to display and print documents in non-Western languages that can be accessed via the WWW and/or from specific course web pages. Mary-Ann Cartelli (Hunter/Chinese) has triggered this exploration and has contributed some of the information contained in this document.

Chris Thompson (Manager, Instructional Computing Services [ICS] at OICIT) has pledged his support to do the installation in the ICS labs (HN 10th floor), but for the benefit of those interested in installing such language support on their home or office stations and/or in other labs at Hunter, here is what needs to be done. First of all, one needs to distinguish two levels of language support:

The latter requires the purchase of commercial software which would make it possible to compose documents in any of these languages. There are two major vendors both offering free evaluation downloads: Unionway and NJ Star.

The former can be realized by using free software -- originally distributed by MS as an add-on to Inter Explorer 3. The download files seem to have disappeared from the Microsoft site; maybe for good or maybe just temporarily due to yet another restructuring of the MS web site. However, as these file were distributed widely, they still available from a number of software archives. These files are also available from a local server: Traditional Chinese, Simplified Chinese, Japanese, Korean.

Further searching revealed that the files are still available from MS directly, but only after having upgraded to the latest version of MS Internet Explorer. If you use MS IE anyway, this may be a more convenient way to go.

Finally, you may have been able to display and print some Asian language documents without having corresponding fonts installed. This is possible if documents either use "dynamic fonts" or have the Asian text included as graphic image files (.gif files). The latter you see in the ads included on web pages of Asian newspapers, the former can be done with .pdf documents. Here, the font information is packed with the text. The disadvantage of this solution is that the file size increases tremendously (and hence the download is slow) and that printing using dynamic fonts is much slower than printing with installed fonts. If you want to have regular access to say Asian newspaper web sites, a font installation is necessary.
 

Installation Instructions

Font installation

1. Download the font file to a local drive.
2. Double-click on it and click accept to the standard screens.
3. You should see a note that the font has been successfully installed.
4. Restart the station.
5. After reboot, the font appears in the general list of installed fonts.

Installing more than one font at a time (without reboot) may lead to an error. If this happens, do it one font at a time.

Netscape configuration

1. Edit/Preferences/Appearance (Fonts)
2. Select an "encoding" (see table below)
3. Select matching font -- use the same font for both "variable" and "fixed font width"
4. Click OK
5. Repeat process till all new fonts have been matched to specific encodings

These font selections (relative to specific encodings) are stored in the "prefs.js" file (which is stored in the Netscape user subdirectory). In many labs, users do not have access to the Netscape "preferences"; hence, it is important that lab administrator configures Netscape correctly.

Possible user action

If a document contains "character set" information in the "head" of the document, Netscape will automatically select the correct "character set". If not -- and this seems to be the rule rather than the exception -- the viewer (student) needs to select the character set manually by going to "view"/"character set"/xxx , where "xxx" is Traditional Chinese or Simplified Chinese or Japanese or Korean. The choice of "character set" still stay in effect till manually changed back (to, e.g., the default character set "Western (ISO-8859-1)") or till overwritten by a document containing full character set information in its header. The CJK  fonts will display Latin characters as usual (important for documents with mixed contents). Failure to switch the character set back to "Western" has no dire consequences, then.

Here is an overview of installation files, fonts, and encodings/character sets:
 
Install file Resulting font(s) Character set Encoding
ie3lpkcn.exe MS Song, MS Hei Simplified Chinese GB
ie3lpktw.exe MingLi Traditional Chinese Big 5
ie3lpkja.exe MS Gothic Japanese Auto-Detect
ie3lpkko.exe GulimChe Korean Auto-Detect

These installation files are fairly big ranging between 2.2 and 4 MB, the installed fonts are even larger (up to 6MB) while the usual Western fonts are usual under 100KB and rarely bigger than 200KB. Installing these fonts may slow down your station -- especially if you are short on memory. I would not recommend to install any of these files unless you have at least 32MB memory -- or there is a definitive need for it. If you run Win98, you are in a better position, as fonts are no longer loaded at startup (as in Win3.x) but only when actually used.

For "simplified Chinese" a choice must be made between MS Song and MS Hei (this is a choice like one between "Arial" and "Times Roman" -- largely a matter of taste).

Checking the installation/configuration

Sample document (web site) Character set Encoding
You need to select the appropriate character set from the Netscape "view" menu.
The "title" (top line of the Netscape window against dark blue background) will still look like garbage even if installation and configuration was successful.
Xin Hua News Agency Simplified Chinese GB
Beijing Spring Traditional Chinese Big 5
Yomiuri Shimbun Japanese Auto-Detect
Chosun Ilbo Korean Auto-Detect
More Asian media sites (and media sites around the world) can be found from ABYZ News Links

Will it work?

As always, I present this information as to the best of my knowledge, but I cannot give any guarantees that it will work on your station (keep in mind, that installation of these fonts will occupy 'system resources' (memory)). I tried everything on two stations: No problems. I have had Japanese and Korean fonts installed on my home computer since about two years. During most of this time, I had only 48MB memory available. I also had these fonts on my old office station a sub 200 PII Gateway station with just 32MB memory in the beginning. So, a successful installation is possible on less powerful work stations.