[texhax] Typing Chinese with plain TeX

[Rodolfo Medina]

I'm trying to install ChiTeX, after downloading the files from

ftp://ftp.math.ncu.edu.tw/chitex/unix/6.1.2p12lc/

. It appears to be one of the most difficult installations ever happened me
to do.
At a certain point during the installation I was asked questions
with symbols I didn't understand:

ÒѲ⵽»òÄãÊäÈëµÄĿ¼:
         1.  texmf µÄĿ¼ (Ò»°ãΪ /usr/.../texmf) Ϊ:
               2
         2.  *.fmt µµËùÔÚµÄĿ¼ (Ò»°ãΪ /usr/.../texmf/web2c) Ϊ:
               2
         3.  .../texfonts µÄĿ¼ (Ò»°ãΪ /var/tmp/texfonts »ò
           /var/lib/texmf »ò /var/texfonts ÆäÖк¬ÓÐ×ÓĿ¼ tfm, pk µÈ) Ϊ:
               /var/lib/texmf
            ÈôÎÞ´ËĿ¼, Äã¿ÉÄܱØÐë run 'texmfconfig' È¥É趨³ö´ËĿ¼
         4.  ¿ÉÖ´Ðеµ latex ËùÔÚµÄĿ¼Ϊ:
               /usr/bin

         ÒÔÉϲ⵽µÄĿ¼Èô²»ÊÇ¿ÕĿ¼¾ÍÊÇÕýÈ·.

         ÈôÈ«²¿ÕýÈ·¼üÈë y ¼ü, ·ñÔòÇë¼üÈë '1' »ò '2',..
         (ÒÔ±ãÖØÐÂÊäÈë¸ÃÏîÄ¿Ö®´íÎóĿ¼)
         :

I didn't know what to reply!
Then I wrote to professor Hung-Yih Chen, who said:

    Your system should have been installed with chinese environment
    or have chinese xterm, for example, cxterm or others.
    In cxterm, you could read and input chinese.
    The symbols you could not read are chinese characters.

Then I went to the web site

http://cxterm.sourceforge.net

and downloaded the 5.2.3 version of cxterm.
I tried to install it:
I typed

   tar xvfz cxterm-5.2.3.tgz
   cd cxterm-5.2.3
   ./configure

and everything seemed to go well; but when I typed

   make

I got the following output ('carolina' is the username;
she's my sister, who speaks Chinese,
and it's for her that I'm trying to install ChiTeX):

[carolina at localhost cxterm-5.2.3]$ make
make  all-recursive
make[1]: Entering directory `/home/carolina/cxterm-5.2.3'
Making all in cxterm
make[2]: Entering directory `/home/carolina/cxterm-5.2.3/cxterm'
gcc  -g -O2   -o cxterm.bin  button.o HZbuiltn.o HZinMthd.o HZutil.o
screen.o util.o charproc.o HZchList.o HZInput.o input.o scrollbar.o
VTPrsTbl.o cursor.o HZfilter.o HZpopup.o main.o tabs.o data.o HZinArea.o
HZtrie.o menu.o Tekproc.o HZassoc.o HZinCntx.o HZtrieWc.o misc.o
ekPrsTbl.o  -L/usr/X11R6/lib -lXaw -lXt -lXmu  -lSM -lICE -lncurses -lXext -
lX11 -lXpm -lm
/usr/bin/ld: cannot find -lncurses
collect2: ld returned 1 exit status
make[2]: *** [cxterm.bin] Error 1
make[2]: Leaving directory `/home/carolina/cxterm-5.2.3/cxterm'
make[1]: *** [all-recursive] Error 1
make[1]: Leaving directory `/home/carolina/cxterm-5.2.3'
make: *** [all] Error 2
[carolina at localhost cxterm-5.2.3]$

So the installation did not succeed.
I would like to ask prof. Hung-Yih Chen only questions strictly concerning
ChiTeX.
Is anybody out there who can give me a hint?
(Maybe Edward G.J. Lee?)
I'd be very grateful.

Thanks indeed,
		Rodolfo

P.S.: Is it necessary to know Chinese to do the installation of cxterm and
ChiTeX?
I know nothing of Chinese, and my sister is out these days.
And, after I will have installed cxterm and ChiTeX, I still haven't
understood
how to type the standard input and the input .tex file in order to get
Chinese symbols.
I don't understand how the symbols I mentioned above: ÒѲ⵽»òÄãÊäÈëµÄĿ¼:
etc...
can be called chinese characters, neither how they can be produced on the
keyboard.
Maybe a special keyboard is needed?
I realise there's plenty of things I still don't know about all this
matter...
And that's also why it looks quite interesting.