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From the early days of computing when computers could only work with English or needed special hardware to work with Chinese characters, computers have made great advances in being able to handle Chinese. Most computers handle Chinese in one of three ways. In the first method the operating system itself is localized for Chinese. The OS comes with Chinese fonts and handles the display and input of Chinese characters. All of the text the user sees in also in Chinese. These systems are best for people who deal mainly with Chinese and do not know English, as in China and Taiwan. An example of this is Microsoft's Traditional and Simplified Chinese Windows. Another popular solution for users in the United States of America and other countries is to add a Chinese helper program on top of the operating system. These helpers, such as TwinBridge's Chinese Partner for Windows and the Chinese Language Kit for the Macintosh, typically come with Chinese fonts and handle the display and input of Chinese. They allow the use of Chinese in other English programs on the computer, such as word processors and Internet browsers. Increasingly, many programs are being equipped to better handle Chinese themselves. They store text in the universal computer encoding Unicode and can display Chinese text themselves, if a Chinese font exists on the system. Microsoft Office, both major Internet browsers, and programs written in Java are examples of such software.
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