To: newsletter@chinesecomputing.com Subject: Chinese Computing Newsletter, November, 1999 Chinese Computing Newsletter; November, 1999, v.2 ================================================= Included in this issue: * Mac OS 9 includes Unicode Support, multiple Language Kits * Unicode 3.0 Announced; Includes Enlarged Unihan Range * Ruby support in IE5.0 * Hong Kong's GCCS extension to Big5 revised and renamed to HKSCS * Chinese Supplement for JAVA 2 SDK V1.2 Released ** Mac OS 9 includes Unicode Support, Chinese Language Kit The recently released Mac OS 9 now includes the option to install the Chinese Language Kit and other language kits. Macintosh users will no longer need to purchase separate programs to display and input Chinese. Also included with the Mac OS 9 is a great deal of developer support for dealing with Unicode text, including utilities for converting between legacy encodings and Unicode, support for displaying Unicode text, a Unicode-based Multilingual Text Editor (MLTE), and much more. Dealing with Big5 and GB text files has become much easier. Further Information: Mac OS 9 Main Page http://www.apple.com/macos/ Text and International Services in Mac OS http://developer.apple.com/techpubs/macos8/TextIntlSvcs/textintlsvcs.html ** Unicode 3.0 Announced The newest version of the Unicode Standard, version 3.0, is now available at the Unicode web site. The revised Unicode 3.0 Standard book will be published in early 2000. With this release, the number of characters in the UniHan range has been expanded from 21204 to 27786. Also, properties have been added to better handle choosing between half-width and full-width forms in CJK text. Further Information: Unicode Standard, v3.0 http://www.unicode.org/unicode/standard/versions/Unicode3.0.html East Asian Text Width Data ftp://ftp.unicode.org/Public/3.0-Update/EastAsianWidth-3.txt Revised Unihan Properties Database ftp://ftp.unicode.org/Public/3.0-Update/Unihan-3.txt ** Ruby support in IE5.0 Support for displaying annotations, including pronunciations, above text is now supported in Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.0. This style of annotation, known as the ruby or furigana in Japanese, is commonly used to indicate the pronunciation of a character, as with hiragana for Japanese or pinyin or bopomofo for Chinese. Currently IE5.0 only includes support for displaying the ruby above the character, but the developing standard includes support for display underneath, and vertically to the side, allowing for bopomofo annotation as done in Taiwan children's books. Current support for the tag is a welcome tool for Chinese web page developers. Netscape Navigator does not currently support the RUBY tag and from the Mozilla site it is not clear if Navigator 5.0 will. Further Information: RUBY Tag description for IE5.0 http://msdn.microsoft.com/workshop/Author/dhtml/reference/objects/RUBY.asp Official Ruby HTML Description http://www.w3.org/TR/ruby/ Example Page using RUBY Tag (in GB) http://www.mandarintools.com/rubysample.htm ** Hong Kong's Big5 Extension Revised and Enlarged The Hong Kong extension to the Big5 character set has been expanded and renamed to the Hong Kong Supplementary Character Set. These additions include characters used in Hong Kong but not found in the Big5 character set. This revision replaces the Government Common Character Set adopted in 1995 in Hong Kong. This item comes from Thomas Chan through the chinese@kenyon.edu mailing list. Further Information Description and Mapping Tables for HKSCS http://www.digital21.gov.hk/eng/hkscs/index.html Software Files for the HKSCS http://www.info.gov.hk/gccs/ ** Chinese Supplement for JAVA 2 SDK V1.2 Released Sun has recently released a version of the Java 2 SDK localized for Chinese. This localization, also called CJDK1.2, is an unofficial translation and future support is not guaranteed. The documentation says only Simplified Chinese is supported. Related Links Chinese Localization for Java 2 SDK Page http://java.sun.com/products/jdk/1.2/chinesejdk.html -------------------------------------------------------------------- Please send suggestions for future Chinese Computing Newsletter items to erik@chinesecomputing.com. Past issues of the newsletter can be accessed through the www.chinesecomputing.com site. Feel free to redistribute the newsletter for non-commercial use. To remove yourself from the list, send an e-mail to newsletter@chinesecomputing.com. On the subject line write "remove your@email-address.com".