Next Previous Contents

9. Related Chinese Problems with Others

9.1 Netscape Navigator

Netscape 2.0 or later support both BIG5 and GB codes, which have already discussed on several homepages. To display Chinese in Netscape, there are three steps:

  1. Install Chinese fonts of X. Refer to the section Installing Chinese Fonts .
  2. Run netscape, and configure Document Encoding as Traditional Chinese (Big5) or Simplified Chinese.
  3. Select the Chinese fonts you want.
Maybe you will feel so strange that why you can only use Fixed(HKU) Size 16.0, which is causing from the settings in /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/app-defaults/Netscape. Assuming that you have the following BIG5 fonts: 

# xlsfonts | grep big5
-hku-fixed-medium-r-normal--0-0-72-72-c-0-big5.hku-0
-hku-fixed-medium-r-normal--16-160-72-72-c-160-big5.hku-0
-kc-kai-medium-r-normal-fantizi-0-0-75-75-c-0-big5.eten.3.10-1
-kc-kai-medium-r-normal-fantizi-20-200-75-75-c-200-big5.eten.3.10-1
-kc-kai-medium-r-normal-fantizi-24-240-75-75-c-240-big5.eten.3.10-1
-kc-ming-medium-r-normal-fantizi-0-0-75-75-c-0-big5.eten.3.10-1
-kc-ming-medium-r-normal-fantizi-15-150-75-75-c-160-big5.eten.3.10-1
-kc-ming-medium-r-normal-fantizi-24-240-75-75-c-240-big5.eten.3.10-1
Add one line to /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/app-defaults/Netscape 

*documentFonts.charset*big5.eten.3.10-1:              x-x-big5
Then, Netscape can use these fonts well.

Another solution is to name aliases for your fonts's names: Adding aliases in the fonts.alias file(create it yourself if there is no such a file) under your fonts directory.


-big5-taipeik-medium-r-normal--16-160-72-72-c-160-big5.hku-1 taipei16
-big5-taipeik-medium-r-normal--20-200-72-72-c-200-big5.hku-1 taipeik20
-big5-taipeik-medium-r-normal--24-240-72-72-c-240-big5.hku-1 taipeik24

The fonts filenames, like taipeik20, are that you need to give aliases to them. After modification, do


# xset fp rehash
to reload fonts's names to make them available.

You may find that the sizes of Chinese and English are out of proportion in homepages of Chinese-English languages(such as too small English words), which is the reason that what you've selected for English fonts and Chinese fonts is unbalanced at the magnitude. Go back to the configuration for fonts, and select Western(iso-8859-1). Then, in your opinion, change the size of English fonts to make it perfect in proportions.

9.2 sendmail

Because defaults of sendmail 8.8.x will encode all 8-bit mails first before sending them out, which may or may not reduce influences to those receiver. (Refer to Next Sub-Section for solutions). Most hosts can directly send 8-bit mails now, so you had better re-compile sendmail and close the encoding ability.

9.3 procmail

procmail is an electronic mail filter, which can manipulate mails first before storing them into your mailbox, for example, classification for mails and so on. Though, I want to teach you how to make use of procmail to uncode the encoded ones into pure text files and how to convert the various encoded mails into common encoding you used here.

Create .procmailrc file under your home directory, listed as follows:

# To avoid accidents, store mails before using procmail. 
# You can filter mails to ensure which mail doesn't need to duplicate
# by, for example, MAILER-DAEMON. 
:0 c
* !^From.*MAILER-DAEMON
mail/procmail-backup

# Uncode mails encoded by quoted-printable or base64. 
:0
* ^Content-Type: *text/plain
{
    :0 fbw
    * ^Content-Transfer-Encoding: *quoted-printable
    | mimencode -u -q

        :0 Afhw
        | formail -I "Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit" \
                  -I "X-Mimed-Autoconverted: quoted-printable to 8bit by procmail"

    :0 fbw
    * ^Content-Transfer-Encoding: *base64
    | mimencode -u -b

        :0 Afhw
        | formail -I "Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit" \
                  -I "X-Mimed-Autoconverted: base64 to 8bit by procmail"
}

# Here will judge whether a mail is GB codes or not; if it is, convert it
# into BIG5 codes. If you want to convert BIG5 codes into GB codes, you
# need to exchange big5 with gb2312 and replace 'hc -m b2g' with 'hc -m g2b'. 

:0
* ^Content-Type:.*text/plain;.*charset=gb2312
{
    :0 fw
    | hc -m b2g -t /usr/local/lib/chinese/hc.tab

        :0 Afhw
        | formail -I "Content-Type: text/plain; charset=big5" \
                  -I "X-Charset-Autoconverted: gb2312 to big5 by procmail"
}

# Store mails into mailbox. 
:0:
${ORGMAIL}

In this case, integrating with mimencode, formail to decode mails, and use hc to convert GB codes mails into BIG5 codes mails. Thus, you have to install these tools in order to use procmail.

Eventually, rectify your .forward file.


"|IFS=' ' && exec /usr/bin/procmail -f- ~/.procmailrc ||exit 75 #login"
Notes: change the login as your login name.

9.4 telnet

If you can access Chinese on your own machine, but cannot access Chinese while telnet to other machines, then the problems may cause from telnet itself. When telnet is being under connection, you can press Ctrl-] to jump out temporarily, and enter set binary at the prompt of telnet> to assure the fully transmission of bits. You can also use telnet -8 to make connections (but it seems won't work for some sites...?). Another more simple method is to use directly a 8-bit telnet program. Download the binary file from here:

ftp://linux.cis.nctu.edu.tw/packages/chinese/misc/

9.5 less

less itself can display Chinese directly; just set the following environment variable can Chinese display:


# export LESSCHARSET=latin1

9.6 pine

Pine of version 3.95 later can support reading and entering Chinese mails. As you execute pine, select SETUP/Config in feature list, choose this(hit X):


   [X]  enable-8bit-esmtp-negotiation
   [X]  enable-8bit-nntp-posting

Then, hit C on character-set, and change its value to big5 or gb2312. Finally, hit E to escape and store this change.

You can also install the cpine capable of showing Chinese messages:

ftp://ftp.vit.edu.tw/unix/linux/chinese/cpine-3.91.bin.tgz

9.7 samba

9.8 lynx

Lynx v2.7 can view Chinese homepages directly. Execute lynx, and press O)ption / C)haracter set, and then choose Taipei(Big5) by arrow keys, and finally press '>' to store this set.

9.9 minicom

Use the switch -l to start minicom, then you can see Chinese in minicom.

9.10 fingerd

If you type Chinese in your .plan but can't be saw by others, this is probably caused by the inability of fingerd to send out 8-bit Chinese words. Get cfingerd from this site:

ftp://nctuccca.edu.tw/OS/Linux/packages/network/finger/cfingerd-1.3.2.tar.gz

Decompress it and execute ./Configure, then implement make all .

Then, modify /etc/inetd.conf, changing the original finger to:


finger  stream  tcp     nowait  root    /usr/sbin/tcpd  /usr/sbin/in.cfingerd

Let inetd read the configuration file again:


# kill -HUP `cat /var/run/inetd.pid`

9.11 tintin++

The TinTin++ is not a Chinese software but just a useful tool when playing Chinese mud.You can download it from this place:

ftp://ftp.princeton.edu/pub/tintin++

Here are some Chinese mud sites:


FengYun                  fengyun.com       5555
Xi You Ji                129.105.79.24     6905
Xia ke Xing              207.76.64.2       5555

Next Previous Contents