1. Project Goal

3. Installation and Configuration of cxterm

3.0. What is cxterm

3.1. Hardware and System Software Requirement

3.2. Installation and Configuration of cxterm-5.0

3.2.1. Excerpts for installation from cxterm5.0.p3.tar.gz

3.2.2. Excerpts for installation from the 3 .rpm files

4. Display Chinese

5. Input Chinese

6. Print Chinese

7. What to do next

1. Project Goal:

• Learn to install and configure a chinese system on linux
• Use it to display, input and print chinese
• Get general ideas of supporting a non-English language on a system

• A Chinese word is composite of two bytes in computers
• The first byte of each word is almost bigger than numeric value 128, which is what we called the non-ASCII codes.
• Most popular encoding methods includes BIG5 codes available in the area of Taiwan and GB codes available in the mainland China.
• Difficulties of Using Chinese on Linux system:
• in the early days, many programs didn't consider the possibility of non-ASCII codes as a part of entering data. when they meet with non-ASCII codes, they truncate the 8th bit
• Applications  are incapable of identifying the Chinese encoding, they all take a Chinese word as two individual bytes
• Communication programs on Internet usually could only transmit 7-bit data. (A notorious substance is the earlier sendmail program )This problem seems to be more complicated on Internet.
• backspace may cut half of an individual character, and leaves the rest half make no sense.

3. Installation and Configuration of cxterm:

3.0. What is cxterm?

-- a Chinese virtual terminal running under X Window System

3.1. Hardware and System Software Requirement

Any hardware configuration that supports Unix and X window.

Examples:
        Sun workstation, HP, DEC station, IBM/RT, IBM/RS, SGI, ...
        386/486/Pentium PC (with VGA or better), Macintosh,
        Visual X Terminal, NCD, HP/X, ...

A complete version of X Window System Version 11 (Release 4 or higher). Cxterm needs the following X11 standard libraries: Xlib, Xt, Xaw, Xmu, and Xext.

3.2. Installation and Configuration of cxterm-5.0

3.2.1. Excerpts for installation from cxterm5.0.p3.tar.gz file:

Download cxterm5.0.p3.tar.gz from ftp://ftp.ifcss.org/pub/software/x-win/cxterm/,
which contains both cxterm codes and Chinese fonts.

# tar -xvzf cxterm5.0.p3.tar.gz    ; decompres the packed
# cd cxterm-5.0 
# ./config.sh                                         ; login as root to execute config.sh

  0. Read COPYRIGHT Notice
  1. Compile, Install, and Configure "CXTERM 5.0" in One Step
  2. Compile cxterm (not to install)
  3. Install cxterm (after successful compilation in 2)
  4. Install additional Chinese font(s) for your X window
  5. Configure your account for using cxterm (after installation in 3)
  x. Exit
Please choose (0/1/2/3/4/5/x) :

# 1                    ; choose 1 to start compiling

    1. Install in directories of your choice.
    2. Install in the system X Window directories (may need "root" access).
    0. Exit cxterm installation.
Please choose (1,2,0) [1] :

# 1                    ; choose 1 to install it in the directories of your choice

    Where do you want to put the executable binary files for cxterm?
    Enter the full path name [/home/grad4/jliu/bin] :
# /home/grad4/jliu/cxterm/bin

    Where do you want to put the dictionary files for cxterm?
    Enter the full path name [/home/grad4/jliu/dict] :
# /home/grad4/jliu/cxterm/dict
 
    Where do you want to put the cxterm manual pages?
    Enter the full path name [/home/grad4/jliu/man] :
# /home/grad4/jliu/cxterm/man
 
    Where do you want to put the cxterm documentation?
    Enter the full path name [/home/grad4/jliu/doc/cxterm] :
# /home/grad4/jliu/cxterm/doc/cxterm
#
    Do you want to do the font installation (y/n) [n] ?
# y
    Where do you want to put the X11 font files?
    Enter the full path name [/home/grad4/jliu/xfonts] :
# /home/grad4/jliu/cxterm/xfonts
#
    a window will pop up to display chinese characters (font verification)
#
    Do you want to set up your account (y/n) [y] ?
# n
     CXTERM 5.0 installation completed.

# export PATH=$PATH:/home/grad4/jliu/cxterm/bin ; add path
# CXterm -gb/-big5           ; start cxterm using gb/big5 codes

3.2.2. installation from .rpm files:

• What is rpm?
• RPM is the Red Hat Package Manager. While it does contain Red Hat in the name, it is completely intended to be open.
• It is quite flexible and easy to use;
• It provides the base for a very extensive system
• download three .rpm files from ftp://ftp.redhat.com/pub/contrib/hurricane/i386/:

cxterm-color-5.0p3-1.i386.rpm
cxterm-color-big5-5.0p3-1.i386.rpm
cxterm-color-gb-5.0p3-1.i386.rpm
• # rpm -i *.rpm

It's simple to install these .rpm files! One command setup everything!
• # export PATH=$PATH:/usr/local/chinese/bin

# cxterm             ; start cxterm

4. Display Chinese:

• start cxterm
• use editors ( such as pico ...)

5. Input Chinese:

• some editors may not be proper for editing Chinese files ( like vi ) because they have some reserved keys for specific functions and may confuse with Chinese codes.
• Input methods:

F1    -->    English
F2    -->    IC ( Internal Code)                       
F3    -->    cxterm Input Configuration
F4    -->    TonePY (Dai4 Diao4 Pin1 Yin1) 
F5    -->    QJ (Quan2 Jiao3)
F6    -->    PY (Wu2 Diao4 Pin1 Yin1)     ; I use it often
F7    -->    WuBi                                       ;  for professional typists
F8    -->    English
F9    -->    SW (Shou3 Wei3)
F10  -->    TeleCode
F11  -->    Hiragana

6. Print Chinese:

• Download cnprint280.tar.gz from ftp://ftp.ifcss.org/pub/software/unix/print
• Uncompress:

    gunzip  cnprint280.tar.gz
    tar -xvf cnprint280.tar    ; get files: cnprint.cmd, cnprint.c, README

• Compile:

     gcc cnprint.c -o cnprint
     mv cnprint /usr/local/bin
• Install HBF fonts:
•  HBF fonts includes both description files and fonts files.
•  A .hbf is the header file describing fonts, with a texture of plain text, recording the file     names of its fonts files.
• Both of two files must be installed (download from ftp://ftp.ifcss.org/pub/software/fonts/ )
• For example: If you want to use ccfs24.hbf, for example, which is a sort of simplified Sung-imitated style font, you must obtain these three following files: ccfs24.hbf, cclib.n24 and ccsym.24. ( That's what we did )
• Establish a specific directory to store HBF fonts:
         mkdir HBF  ; under /home/grad4/jliu/cxterm/
• Put all HBF description files and fonts files you've got together under this directory
• export the complete directory pathname for HBF out of environmental variables

          export HBFPATH="/home/grad4/jliu/cxterm/HBF/"
• copy cnprint.cmd to HBFPATH because cnprint.cmd contains some default values for cnprint, you have to fix them up to point to the HBF fonts you have installed:
             cp cnprint.cmd $HBFPATH
• Print file:
• use ``cnprint -w FILENAME'' to change Chinese text files into PostScript file
• lpr
 

7. What to do next:

• Install more fonts for display and print
• Related Chinese problems with other softwares (refer to http://linuxcentral.com/linux/LDP/HOWTO/Chinese-HOWTO-9.html#ss9.1) , such as:
• Netscape
• Pine
• Telnet