[tlug] Bizarre problem with ptex and furigana

["David Arroyo" <david.a.arroyo@example.com>]

I have spent the past few days wrestling with ptex. There were no
package files for my linux distribution, so I used the ptetex3 set of
patches over teTeX found here:
http://www.nn.iij4u.or.jp/~tutimura/tex/ptetex.html . After that it
was getting my system to save files in the correct encoding and
configuring emacs. I can finally produce good-looking PDF's with
platex. At least that's what I thought. Trying to use furigana with
the furikana.sty file garbled the kanji: any kanji with furigana over
it would be superimposed with an at (@) symbol for each kana. An
example pdf is attached.

Looking for answers has proved difficult, as I'm not a native speaker.
Any sort of direction would be fine. I'm not sure where or who to go
to on this. The distribution files I used were tetex-src-3.0.tar.gz,
tetex-texmf-3.0po.tar.gz, and ptetex3-20080311. The @'s show up in the
dvi output as well.

Also, all of this struggling begs the question: what is the best
Japanese typesetting solution available for linux? I will be going to
school in Japan very soon and I'd like to be prepared in that regard.
The general impression I get is that latex-CJK is for light usage of
japanese, ptex is cumbersome but it supports all the insanity of
japanese typesetting, and xetex is the future but we're not there yet.
Should I continue wrestling with ptex? Or maybe install a japanese
linux distribution and be done with it?

Sincerely,
David A. Arroyo