[texhax] Typing Chinese with plain TeX

[Rodolfo Medina]

I asked Tang to continue our posting privately to not annoy other listers
with the details of the messages occurring during the installation of
ChiTeX:
Tang generously translated in English the main messages
that prompt the user during that installation,
and made that installation almost completely understandble for the western
user.
I will give a report of that later.

Now I'm reporting our last messages of general interest.

Tang wrote:

>  I'm a Emacs user. Emacs support chinese characters.
>  First of all,
>  you need at least one chinese font files in your system and
>  configure Emacs to recognize it. You should read the Emacs manual's
>  *mule* section for more information. You can type:
>
>      M-x view-hello-file
>
>  to see if your Emacs can display chinese characters correctly. If
>  you are very lucky, you will seen this line:
>
> Chinese (?????,??)	??


Rodolfo wrote:

>I was lucky: within Emacs, typing
>
>        M-x view-hello-file
>
>, I could read the chinese characters.


Tang wrote:

> Secondly, you need a chinese input method to input chinese. You
> can use X input method(XIM) to do this. The SCIM input method is an
> excellent input method platform, you can download it form:
>
>    http://freedesktop.org/~suzhe/
>
>Fortunately, You have another more convenient choice. Emacs itself
>has various of language input methods including chinese. You can
>try:
>
>      C-u M-x toggle-input-method RET TAB
>
>to see is there any chinese input method?
>If you use Emacs 21.3 or
>other older version, maybe you have to install leim package. It
>can be found in:
>
>      http://ftp.gnu.org/pub/gnu/emacs/
>
>The leim package has been included in CVS Emacs now.


Rodolfo wrote:

>I tried within Emacs with
>
>	C-u M-x toggle-input-method RET TAB
>
>and found many chinese input methods.
>Which one shall I choose,
>and how to make it work?
>How can I type ``Hallo, Carolina!'' to my sister?

Tang wrote:

>Perhaps *chinese-py* or *chinese-py-b5* is what you need.
>*chinese-py* is used to input Simplified Chinese.
>*chinese-py-b5* is used to input  Traditional Chinese.
>Simplified Chinese is widely used now in China mainland,  so I think
>this is what your sister study. Traditional Chinese is used only in
>China's  Hong Kong and Taiwan district.
>chinese input method is only  used to input chinese characters, if you
>wanna input your own language characters, please type C-\ to switch to
>your default input method.  Maybe you are
>very curious about chinese, you can type(turn on the chinese-py or
>chinese-py-big5 input method first):
>
>     'n'  'i'  '1'  'h' 'a' 'o' '1'
>
>now  you  have inputed two chinese characters, they are "?" "?" ,
>which means "hello" in english.:)
>There are many chinese input method, each one has its advantage and
>disadvantage. *chinese-py* is the most commonly used .  You can ask
>your sister for more advice.:)

Thanks to all,
		Rodolfo