Re: tlug: Need info. about Japanese and Linux

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

>>>>> "Fredric" == Fredric Fredricson <Fredric.Fredriksson@example.com> writes:

    Fredric> The main problem is that we do not have a GUI. We use a
    Fredric> character based interface (for a lot of historical
    Fredric> reasons). I realize that a GUI is probably required to
    Fredric> get Japanese characters and this is also a logical next
    Fredric> step. The problem is, as always (sigh), resources.

The program `kon' available from several sources, including PJE (which
I think uses RPM packaging): <http://www.pje.linux.or.jp>, and
Debian-JP: <ftp://ftp.debian.or.jp>.  If Debian, get the source
distribution, probably in dists/stable-jp/source/... or something like
that; get all the files with the same name (*.tar.gz, *.dsc,
*.diff.gz, I think they are) but do not apply the .diff file without
seeing what it does---these are usually bug fixes but sometimes they
tweak the program into line with Debian standards, which is probably
undesirable for use with other distributions.  Similarly, the dsc file
contains "Debian control" scripts which probably don't apply to your
Red Hat set up but may contain hints about setting up the program.

    Fredric> There may be a problem here. I understand kterm can
    Fredric> display kanji but most kanji texts I have seen seems to
    Fredric> contain occasional characters of different types. If this
    Fredric> is the case a pure kanji interface may not be good
    Fredric> enough. Could anybody enlighten me here?

The "occasional characters" are probably all Japanese phonetic
characters ("hiragana" and "katakana") and ASCII characters.  If so,
no problem.

(The Japanese standard also includes Greek and Russian alphabets,
although it's not clear that texts you run into using those characters
would use the Japanese versions rather than the appropriate ISO-8859-*
versions.  You will probably run into problems trying to use the GR
(8-bit-set) characters in ISO-8859 alphabets with kon, but it would
not be a problem with kterm and a little tweaking of the environment.)

If you really mean a purely Japanese + some English environment,
though, kon (Kanji ON console) is going to be very close to everything 
you need for display/menuing type interfaces.

Don't forget to pick up the fonts, too; they're often in a separate
package.

You may also need to deal with keyboards, look for keyboard config
files for "jp-106" keyboards.  Also character input; get Canna or Wnn
(I prefer the former, many people the latter).

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