Because the majority of
people are using Microsoft Windows 95/98/NT and also because enabling
Chinese viewing in a UNIX system is not trivial, I will only talk
about Windows system (As I am not really familiar with Macintosh
I have no idea what you should do for a Macintosh).
If you only want to read Chinese
in web browser, the best and easiest
way is to make use of the web browser itself. The most commonly
used browsers (Internet Explorer and Netscape Navigator) both
support Chinese Character viewing as long as you have installed
the Chinese Character fonts. But note, both browsers don't provide
their own fonts. They can only utilize the fonts installed in
your operating system.
If you have already installed Chinese
font, then go to menu "View"-"Encoding"
in both web browsers, then select "Simplified Chinese (GB2312)
in Netscape and Chinese Simplified (GB2312) in IE. It should work,
otherwise it means you don't have fonts installed.
If you haven't installed Chinese
fonts and you are using Microsoft Windows
(all versions) and you want to do so, the following will apply
on you (network connection has to be available).
For windows98 and IE4/5
users, run IE and go to menu "Tools"
- "Windows Update", then you will have a page listing all available
patches, add-ons to your system. Select whatever you want (Chinese
(Simplified) Language Support) and click "Download" then follow
the instructions.
For Windows95 and IE4/5 users,
run IE and go to menu "Favorites" and select "product update"
(or similar because I can't remember what it is exactly). Once
the update page is shown, do the similar things as for win98
users.
If you haven't installed Internet
Explorer 4 or 5, I strongly recommend
you to do so because that's the safest and easiest way to do
things like patching and upgrading. Go to this
address to download if you want.
Once the fonts have been
installed successfully, you can view
Chinese in both IE and Netscape.
Note, to install IE or update your
IE in a Windows NT system, you need
the "administrator" permission. If you don't have then there is
nothing you can do. In that case, you have to check with your
system administrator about that issue.
If you don't want to change anything
to your web browser or you want to input Chinese as well as read,
you have to install a proper software. The following table lists
the most commonly used Chinese softwares under windows 95/98 and
DOS to the best of my knowledge. Note, unfortunately, most of
them are sharewares which means you have to pay for them in order
to use them legally after a certain days of limitation. You still
can use them after they have expired but you will be keeping annoyed
by warning popping windows.
