Baslinux mailing list

[Neo Sze Wee <neoszewee AT gmx.net>]

On Wed, May 28, 2003 at 09:34:58AM +0200, Krzysztof A. Suchecki wrote:
> Neo Sze Wee wrote: 
>  
> >> Tell me one more thing: was there support for chinese in DOS times? 

I want to add that I wam still using the software when I want to read
chinese.

> 
> > Yes, 3rd party. 
> 
> Pure text console err... command line?

It is a chinese environment called kc. I launch it from dos commandline
and it gives back the commandline. Now I can view, and I think input(I
have noot tried to input using kc), chinese. Then I launch lynx for dos
to read chinese characters. When I finished, I launch kcfree -r and I am
back in the origibal commandline. There is also a standalone viewer and
editor called njstar for dos. I use this to craete chinese file.

> Or something in graphic mode?
> (I recollect some soft to learn chinese but it was in graphic mode)
> 
> I ask because if it was in pure text command line, it should be possible
> to force linux to let you write/read in chinese.

We are talking about dos, how does it relate to linux? You mean using
dosemu?

> 
> If this 3rd party support was for pure text command line,
> the question arises: how many different letters were displayed? 
> We can have max. 512.
> 
> DOS is not 2bit system, but Linux kernel uses Unicode.

What I am writing now is ascii. Normally it supports a subset of
characters. It can be extended. Each character is represented by 1 bit.
1 bit is not enough for chinese because it is a pictorial language so
the people who design the code use 2 bits. This will allow us to
represent not only more charcters but satisfies the complexity of the
language. The number of characters that can be displayed depends on the
library mostly. If I am not wrong, 2000 chinese characters is sufficent
for normal conversation.

In this sense, I am not talking about the bit of the operating system.

> 
> 
> Chris
> 
>