Chinese Computing Newsletter; October, 2001
	     ===========================================


CONTENTS
========

* GAGA Chinese Linux Distribution Pre-release Version 1 Available
* Yangchunbaixue KDE Chinese Environment for Red Hat Linux 7.1
* WorldLingo English<->Chinese On-line Translation
* Oxford Chinese Dictionary Available for Palm 
* Acer Announces New Chinese Palm OS Handheld

* Site of the Month: Jisyo: Study Chinese with Pop-up Hints 
* Code Sample of the Month: Decode Base64 E-mail in Perl



ARTICLES
========

** GAGA Chinese Linux Distribution Pre-release Version 1 Available

   The Chinese Linux Extension team on October 19th made available a
pre-release version of their Chinese Linux distribution, GAGA.  GAGA,
based on the Linux kernel 2.4.9, supports the input and display of
Chinese but also includes support for the printing of Chinese.  The
printing extensions are a principal component of the distribution.
GAGA also includes KDE, GNOME, various office programs, Chinese
dictionary support, etc.
    
Related Links
 http://cle.linux.org.tw/



** WorldLingo English<->Chinese On-line Translation

   WordLingo now has a web-based translation system capable of
translating between Chinese, English, French, German, Italian,
Japanese, Korean, Portuguese(Brazilian), Russian, and Spanish.  Users
can translate web pages or type in text to be translated.  WorldLingo
also offers human translation between a variety of different
languages, included Simplified and Traditional Chinese.

Related Links
 http://www.worldlingo.com



** Yangchunbaixue KDE Chinese Environment for Red Hat Linux 7.1

   Dynasoft Co., Ltd. has released Yangchunbaixue KDE Chinese
Environment for Red Hat Linux v7.1.  This environment allows the
display and input of Chinese in KDE on Red Hat 7.1.

Related Links
 http://dyp.v-eden.com/
 http://linuxpr.com/releases/4175.html



** Oxford Concise English<->Chinese Dictionary Available for Palm 

   Pleco Software Incorporated now has a Palm-version of the Oxford
Concise English-Chinese Chinese-English Dictionary.  The dictionary
has "almost 24,000 entries in its Chinese to English dictionary and
over 12,000 in its English to Chinese dictionary".  It also includes
handwriting input, radical input, pinyin search ability, a built-in
Chinese display system, and cross-referencing (get definitions for the
words you see on your screen).  The system supports simplified and
traditional characters.  At $38, the system appears to be a good
purchase for Palm owners who are learning or using Chinese.

Related Links
 http://www.pleco.com/



** Palm OS learns Chinese

   The Acer Group in Taiwan has announced the first Palm OS-based
handheld that supports Chinese natively, the s10.  Both the operating
system and the included applications have localized for Chinese.  A
Chinese-English dictionary has also been included, as well as a
variety of Chinese input methods and a trainable Chinese handwriting
input system.  Various also modifications have also been made to help
Chinese users.

Related Links
 http://global.acer.com/Products/news.asp?pageID=1493
 http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1006-200-7576672.html?tag=lthd




** Site of the Month: Jisyo.org - Study Chinese with Pop-up Hints 

   Jisyo.org helps learners of Chinese and Japanese to read web pages
in those languages.  Users can either type in text or enter the
address for a web, and the site will then mark-up the text with
pronunciation and definitions.  These hints appear when the mouse is
placed over the word.  The site makes use of the EDICT Japanese and
CEDICT Chinese public domain dictionaries.

Related Links
 http://www.jisyo.org/



** Code Sample of the Month:  Decode Base64 E-mail in Perl

  Base-64 is a popular way of encoding Chinese (and other language)
text in e-mail so that it will not be corrupted by 8-bit unaware mail
transport systems.  Sometimes the e-mail client does not decode the
text properly, this code can do that.



sub fixbase64 {
    my($basetext) = @_;
    my($i, $retval, $byte1, $byte2, $byte3);
    my(%alphabits);
    $alphabet = "ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz0123456789+/";
    for ($i = 0; $ i < length($alphabet); $i++) {
	$alphabits{substr($alphabet, $i, 1)} = $i;
    }

    $basetext =~ s/^.*Content-Transfer-Encoding: base64//s;
    $basetext =~ s/( |\n|\r|\t)//g;
    
    for ($i = 0; $i < length($basetext); $i+=4) {
	$inputgroup = substr($basetext, $i, 4);

	$byte1 = $alphabits{substr($inputgroup, 0, 1)} * 0x04;
	$byte1 |= ((0x30 & $alphabits{substr($inputgroup, 1, 1)}) >> 4);
	$byte2 = (0x0F & $alphabits{substr($inputgroup, 1, 1)}) * 0x10;
	$byte2 |= ((0x3c & $alphabits{substr($inputgroup, 2, 1)}) >> 2);
	$byte3 = (0x03 & $alphabits{substr($inputgroup, 2, 1)}) * 0x40;
	$byte3 |= $alphabits{substr($inputgroup, 3, 1)};

	$outputgroup = pack("CCC", $byte1, $byte2, $byte3);
	$retval .= $outputgroup;
    }

    $retval;
}




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