Re: Chinese

[Richard Gabriel <rgabriel@kerio.com>]

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Hello Hans,

to be honest: I don't speak Chinese and don't know much about it.
A few days ago, I was told that we'll let translate some of our documents (XML) into Chinese and Japanese and I 'll have to typeset them. 
So I started playing with Chinese in ConTeXt. I've reported the results which other users (e.g. Tobias) have also noticed. 
In fact, all the sample Simplified Chinese documents I've tested it on were easily convertible to CP936 (GBK) and could be typeset. This doesn't mean that you shall not extend the Unicode support, I only think I will not hardly require it... :-)

But yet another question: What about Japanese? I've made only small research so far, but unlike Chinese, there's almost no information about Japanese in TeX. How much of work would be to adjust the current "chinese" ConTeXt module for Japanese? What would you need for it?
[Of course, meanwhile I'll investigate some other ways of typesetting Japanese...]

Thanks,
Richard



  _____  

From: Hans Hagen [mailto:pragma@wxs.nl]
To: mailing list for ConTeXt users [mailto:ntg-context@ntg.nl]
Sent: Mon, 12 Dec 2005 16:53:51 +0100
Subject: Re: [NTG-context] Chinese

Richard Gabriel wrote:

> Hi guys,
>
> I can confirm that the UTF-8 input doesn't work for me too.
> If I convert the file info GBK (CP936), it works fine [I suggest to 
> use the 'iconv' utility for the conversion :-)].
>
> I tested the UTF-8 output the followin ways:
>
> 1)
> \enableregime[utf]
> \usemodule[chinese]
>

chinese is not yet defined in utf so if you want that, we need to do it

now, since the chinese remapping stuff is rather complex, the best 
method is to consider a dedicated mechanism

question: do the unicode tables cover gbk and big 5 well?

assuming this, how about making a set of tfm,enc,map files that match 
the unicode positions (volunteers ...)

we can extend the utf handler with a kind of plugin mechanism:

\unprotect

\def\utfunihashglyph#1%
  {\@EA\doutfunihashglyph\@EA{\number\utfdiv{#1}}{#1}} % only div once

\def\doutfunihashglyph#1#2% div raw
  {\csname
     \ifnum#2<\utf@i
       \strippedcsname\unicodeasciicharacter
     \else\ifcsname\@@unicommand#1\endcsname
       \@@unicommand#1%
     \else\ifcsname\@@univector#1\endcsname
       \@@univector#1%
     \else
       \strippedcsname\unicodeunknowncharacter
     \fi\fi\fi
     \@EA\endcsname\@EA{\number\utfmod{#2}}} % only mod once

\def\unicodeunknowncharacter#1%
  {\unknownchar}

\let\utfunihash\utfunihashglyph

\def\@@unicommand{@@unicommand}

\def\defineutfcommand #1 #2%
  {\setvalue{\@@unicommand#1}##1{#2{#1}{##1}}}

so we can define pluig in handlers for e.g. chinese

\defineutfcommand 81 {\uchar}

(bombs due to missing fonts, so for testing)

\def\NotYet#1#2{[#1 #2]}

\defineutfcommand 81 {\NotYet}

(next comes adapting the chinese files; i can imagine that we redo the 
big5 and gbk definitions so that they remap to ut8 as common encoding)

so .. the question is ... who is going to make the tfm/enc/map files

Hans

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