tlug: CJK vs. j[la]texs

["Stephen J. Turnbull" <turnbull@example.com>]

>>>>> "Marcus" == Marcus Metzler <mocm@example.com> writes:

    Marcus> Hi, Stephen J. Turnbull writes:

    >> Don't forget to RTFM.  CJK is _not_ jTeX.  It's not hard, but a
    >> little mendoukusai (unless AUC-TeX supports it now?)---note the
    >> `\begin{CJK}...' environment (why does it say "JIS" when it's
    >> not and can't be?)
    >> 

    Marcus> Ok, it might be a little bit hard to handle. I don't

I don't think it's "hard", it's just that Japanese TeXs will accept
streams of mixed Japanese and English without any extra environment.
CJK has the advantage that it handles truly multi-lingual text, but
you do have to put in at least the one CJK environment.

And in the past you had to type in the environment by hand; you didn't 
get the nice support for CJK environments that AUC-TeX gives to say
"figure" (where it sets up the centering and the picture environment
and everything for you).  This is error-prone and tedious (ie,
mendoukusai).

    Marcus> I just wanted to mention the CJK stuff because I hadn't
    Marcus> heard about it in this group and was wondering why.

CJK seems to be an effort of a multilingualization group in Germany;
it's not Asia-based, anyway.  When I first encountered it, it was in
deep alpha, and I was suspicious of the active-character-based
implementation.  The fonts were ugly in screen shots on the Web.  The
kinsoku (word wrapping and filling) probably was not as well-tuned as
a native Japanese TeX.  And it needed to be installed over an existing
TeX by hand.  Japanese TeXs, on the other hand, can be installed by
the existing package installers (there may be CJK packages for Debian
and RedHat now, though).

I don't think any of these are killers, and in fact I think I'll give
CJK a try now that I've got a bit of spare disk.  But added up I think 
they constitute some barrier to entry for CJK in Japan.

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