[texhax] Typing Chinese with plain TeX

Edward G.J. Lee edt1023 at ms17.hinet.net
Fri Sep 3 14:37:25 CEST 2004


On Fri, Sep 03, 2004, Rodolfo Medina wrote:

> On my pc I have Mandrake Linux 9.1,
> and now I can read and input Chinese on my terminal,
> so the installation of cxterm seems to have been succesful.
> Maybe you mean that there is some other problem with cxterm
> that I don't see yet now?

  I'm sorry that I give you wrong information. I had compiled it
  some times ago and got trouble to let cxterm behave normally.

> My next problem now seems to be
> that during the installation of ChiTeX
> the user is asked in Chinese language to choose between different options,
> and I don't know Chinese.
> In particular, at a certain point you get a sort of a list of 4 different
> options:
> 
> ÒѲ⵽»òÄãÊäÈëµÄĿ¼:
[...]

  Shortly, enter `y' to continute.

> . Now after the installationall of cxterm
> all this stuff is displayed with chinese character on the terminal,
> but for me it's ununderstandble just the same.
> I would need the English meaning of this output
> and of the other Chinese inputs that should occur
> further on during the installation of ChiTeX.
> 
> Actually, the installation of ChiTeX seems to partly done.
> In fact, when I type
> 
> $chitex

  Congratulation.

> ; besides, when I try to compile one of the sample files
> featured in the ChiTeX package, I get the followiong output:
> 
> [carolina at localhost carolina]$ chitex math1gb
>     **************************************************
>     *                                                *
>     *  The compiled document is a plain TeX document *
>     *                                                *
>     **************************************************
[...]
> (./chitex.fdfile
> ! Undefined control sequence.
> l.54 MOEKAI

  ChiTeX cannot find the font(MOEKAI). But MOEKAI is for Traditional
  Chinese, I'm afraid you maybe install the Traditional(Big5) fonts
  and compile the Simplified(GB2312) Chinese tex file. There are two
  different font.

  ChiTeX has documents in the doc directory, and written on English
  with some Chinese, maybe you can try to read it first.

> I use plain TeX to write mathematical notes and any other document,
> in normal european characters. ChiTeX would be instead for my sister,
> who is a Chinese-speaking tour guide
> and often needs writing documents in Chinese language for her job.
> I'm sure there must exist other easier chinese writing systems under MS
> Windows,

  ChiTeX has Windows version and newer than Un*x version.

> but since I'm used by now to the high quality of TeX
> I meant to achieve also this purpose with TeX beauty and power.
> LaTeX would not be suitable for me because I'm not good at using it
> and couldn't help my sister with the different matters and difficulties
> that should arise writing documents.
> Now my sister is leaving off and can't help me with the chinese characters
> occurring in the installation of ChiTeX,
> but yesterday when she read the output above
> she found it too techincal and hard for her to understand.

  I see.

> Thanks indeed for your attention and your help,

  Sorry, I didn't give you good infomation.

> P.S.: If I understand well, after the installation of ChiTeX
> you also have to configure Emacs
> in order to make it able to type chinese characters?

  Yes, but I'm not Emacs user, so I don't know how to configure
  it.


Rgds,
Edward



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