How to Read Asian Script on the Internet

In recent years it has become considerably easier to read Asian and other non-Roman scripts (ie. Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Hindi, Arabic, etc.) on the internet. All of the most recent Macintosh and Windows operating systems come pre-packaged with Asian scripts. When used in combination with the standard browsers (Internet Explorer and Netscape) as well as the most popular email applications (Outlook Express, Eudora, Entourage, etc) these Asian language packages make it very easy to read web pages and email messages in virtually any script. The main thing is to make sure that the scripts that you are going to be using are installed when the operating systems are installed. It may be necessary to do a custom install in order to accomplish this. Once that is accomplished, Asian scripts may be viewed by accessing the "Character Set" or "Text Encoding" option in the "View" menu of Netscape, or the "Character Set" or "Text Encoding" option in the "View" menu of Internet Explorer and selecting the script which the site is written in. In Outlook Express and Entourage the appropriate font should appear automatically, but if it does not, you must go to the "Format" menu, and under "Character Set" select the font that suites the original message. Older Windows operating systems (Windows 98 and earlier) may require special software or fonts in order to read non-Roman script.

For Chinese and Japanese the best and most easily available is "NJStars" which can be downloaded as a free trial package. The trial package cannot be used for printouts, but it will serve the purpose of allowing you to read Chinese and Japanese email and websites. Other commercial packages are available for word processing and other functions. One of the cheaper and more reliable is "Unionway." Twinbridge and NJStars are also popular options. See Marjorie Chan's China Links Page for a more thorough discussion of this issue: http://chinalinks.osu.edu/