On Unicode and the Chinese Writing System. Published: 1995-11-12 Updated: 2004-08-04 The Evolution of Character Coding System The 7 bit coding system ASCII can code 128 characters, which was the first standard character coding system. It handles English alphabet quite well, but cannot code all the alphabets of European languages. As a result, a 8 bit coding system Latin-1 (ISO 646), which can code 256 characters, was developed in 1977 to include most European alphabets.
However, 8 bits are certainly not enough to code Chinese characters and symbols in other logographic or morphosyllabic writing systems. Is Unicode Really Universal? In Unicode, the Chinese characters used to write Chinese, Japanese, and Korean are consolidated into a single common repertoire. The Impact of Unicode On the Chinese Writing System At present, Unicode supports over 70,000 CJK characters.
If all other languages, except Chinese, are satisfied with Unicode, then Chinese characters will be in trouble. More Reflections References Sheldon, K. Design Multilingual Website: A Beginner’s Guide. The ‘look and feel‘ of a website is the cornerstone of any successful online venture. But the very nature of the internet means that the instant you upload your carefully constructed pages onto the World Wide Web, you’re global. Image: via YukoTVXQ Indeed, regardless of whether you intend to make buckets of cash from your website or simply build a strong international following online, there are numerous aspects of your site’s design you should consider from the start, to ensure it’s flexible and adaptable to international requirements.
If you want to build a number of foreign-language equivalents of your main site, they need to be properly localized before you launch and the process can be made much less painful if you plan from the start. 1. Image: via subgrafik For those more inclined towards the front-end design aspect of websites than the ‘behind the scenes’ system-related aspects, consider this technical truism: computers deal with numbers, not letters. 2. Image: via djFargo 3. 4. 5. Creating multilingual websites. After 11 years and 4 days online, the IJDb has shut down. It has been an absolute pleasure to run such a popular website for so long. I'd like to take this opportunity to try to thank the great many people that have helped, encouraged, hosted and inspire. In no particular order, Scott Seltzer, Tarim, Mini, Dave Barnes, Jay Linn, The Void, Luke Burrage, Jon Relf, Jon Kennett, The Void, Nils Cox, Stefan Paridaen, JiBe, Marco Paoletti, Guy Berman, Dani, Masaki Nishikawa, Rafael Porelorti, Matteo Vegetti, and finally a special thank you to Little Paul who has been a great help during the shutdown process.
Thank you to Rich Kohut for putting together this fantastic video: I am really pleased that the news of the IJDb shutdown has resulted in the launch of a whole raft of promising looking websites. Rec.juggling via Google Groups - the IJDb forum was 'powered' by rec.juggling, a usenet newsgroup. As you can see, these sites pick up much of what the IJDb has left behind. Regards, Colin E. Jun Da: Chinese text computing. How to display and edit Chinese on English Windows systems Version 2.0 Table of Contents 1. Introduction This tutorial is intended for those who are new to Chinese computing on the Windows XP/Vista/7 platforms (English version). It provides information on how to enable Chinese language support on your machine. Display Chinese in web browsers; Edit Chinese documents using such applications as Microsoft Word; Create Chinese webpages using such authoring tools as Dreamweaver, etc.; Send/read Chinese email messages; Use Chinese file/folder names on your windows system; and Have shell access to a Unix box through SSH with (limited) Chinese support.
Note that the instructions in this tutorial will apply to both GB (simplified) and Big5 (traditional) encoded Chinese. Before you continue, please read the Disclaimer section first. 2. This tutorial applies to the following Windows operating systems: Windows XP Windows Vista Windows 7 3. 3.1 Windows XP To enable Chinese support on Windows XP: 1. 2. 3. Chinese on the Web. How can different languages be displayed on the same web page HTML forum at WebmasterWorld.