Japanese Computing

the author of both the contents and the page itself is
Mitsuhiro Tagata (C) 1996

General Information

In order to read or write Japanese on the computer, you need a Japanese-capable operating system or program. Most machines used in American universities are in this sense not good for Japanese computing. Even though you select "Options - DocumentEncoding - Japanese[Auto-detect]" in your Netscape, for example, you will probably get lines of strange characters. You need some special Japanese-decoding system or program to read Japanese on those machines. The following are some of the home pages about Japanese computing. For PCs, the chapter 2 "PC Browsers" of netscape-j.info.eng is useful. For Macs, it looks like there is no free program and you need to buy the "Japanese Language Kit". U of Washington's Guide to Japanese Computing includes information on Macs.

Japanese Computing at CMU

The Netscapes of Sun and Hewlett Packard machines in Wean 520x are Japanese-capable. In order to use them, log into one of the machines, and in the "xterm" window, enter:

netscape
On the netscape, click "Options" and among the "Documant Encoding" options, choose "Japanese [Auto-detect]".

After closing your Netscape, you need to log out. To do so, move the mouse outside of all the windows, and click the mouse, and then choose "logout".

Some Useful Programs for PCs

There are many Japanese processing programs for PCs on the Web. The following are some of them.

If you have your own computer with Windows 95, the demo version of TwinBridge Japanese Partner 4.0 is useful. While you are setting up the program, make sure you choose "Shift-JIS" and "J-Window". Then, choose the "JpnSystem" font on the Netscape's "Options - General Preferences - Fonts - Japanese" memu. Don't forget to choose "Options - Document Encoding - Japanese[Auto-detect]", too. Unfortunately, it does not work on CMU's Windows NT machines.

TwinBridge cannot print Japanese characters, nor can Sun and Hewlett Packard machines of Wean 520x. In order to print Japanese documents, Michael Boyle and X. Jie Yang's WinJP is probably the best solution. It can display Japanese, too. By saving a Web page temporarily and then opeing it on WinJP, you can read Japanese without TwinBridge. And it is very small (500KB). In order to use it, you need to modify two files JSE.INI and WINJP.INI. It works on Windows 3.1, Windows 95 and Windows NT.

For those who want to use a full-fledged Japanese word processor, Stephen Chung's JWP is a nice program. It is very large (about 6 MB), but you can write and print Japanese as well as read Web pages in the same way as mentioned above.

Finally, I would like to mention that I found the above information originally at Katsuhiko Momoi's netscape-j.info.eng, so his contribution to this field is large.

Printing Japanese Web Sites

In order to print Japanese Web sites as they are, Ka-Ping Yee's Shodouka (shown with the icon

) will be useful. This is a on-line server program which converts each Japanese code into graphic. After retrieving all the Japanese characters, you can print the whole file as a combination of graphics and English characters. However, because all the Japanese characters are transferred from the "Shodouka" server as graphics, it might take 5 to 10 minutes to get all the graphics. It will be often down because of trafic jam.

Useful Web Sites

Some newspapers and dictionaries are included on this list.

Maruzen Bookstore (may be able to search Japanese books)
Asahi Newspaper (one of Japan's largest newspapers)
Japanese Information (includes starting points to other sites)
On-line Webster's Dictionary:1 or 2 or 3
On-line Roget's Thesaurus
Britannca On-line and Merriam-Webster's
APA style guide
Japanese-English Dictionary
Kenkyusha Home Page (includes English-Japanese Dictionaries)