How to setup Japanese environment on a non-Japanese environment machine.

Nihongo ha koko : In Japanese

Keywords : setup Japanese environment, in abroad, Unix, Linux, Windows XP

• Preparing for setting up
• How to tell where is the Japanese fonts to X.
• Building software handling Japanese
• Software setting
• Print with non Japanese PS printer
• SGI Tips
• (Deutsch) Windows XP Tips
• Build a desktop computer
• Others

Preparing for setting up

First of all, you must be able to connect to the Internet or a machine which is already set up the Japanese environment. For exmaple, my environment is as follows.

• Machine : SGI O2, Irix 6.5, Linux Debian 3.0, 3,1
• non-root
• already installed software
  • Netscape Communicator 4.7
  • XEmacs 21.1 (patch 7)
  • gcc version 2.95.2, 3.2.1
  • gzip 1.2.4

How to tell where is the Japanese fonts to X.

Most of non-Japanese environments, Japanese font is not installed. Then, first of all, installing some Japanese font. When Japanese fonts are installed to your system, xemacs and Netscape can handle them. Please follow next steps.

Getting Japanese fonts

1. I found recent X distributions (Debian3.1 and SuSE Linux 9.1) have already Japanese font. In this case, you do not need anything to do of this section.
2. When you can access the free X distribution that has Japanese environment.
   

   On Japanese environment ready X, you can find Japanese font at /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/japanese/ on your system. Copy the fonts to your non-Japanese system. Japanese font file name is like jiskan*.pcf.* .

          cd /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/
          tar cvf fonts.tar japanese
          scp fonts.tar your_machine:/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/
          

3. When you have not Japanese environment.
   

   (Actually, I did not try next.) There are free Japanese fonts at http://www.freebsd.org/ports/x11-fonts.html or some other locations. Please download them to your system.

Install Japanese fonts

Even if you do not have root privilege, you can install Japanese font locally. I installed them at ${HOME}/local/fonts.

     cd ${HOME}/local/fonts/
     tar xvf fonts.tar
     gunzip *.gz
     compress *.pcf
     mkfontdir
     xset +fp ${HOME}/local/fonts/japanese/

Here, first I gunzip the fonts and compress them. Because SGI's X server (also Sun's X) can not deal with gzip-compressed font file directly. After putting fonts, please run mkfontdir program for re-creating fonts.dir and fonts.alias file. Then, add fontpath this directory through xset. Now your X server will recognize the Japanese fonts.

I thank to mad, tate and suzuka. They helped me.

Building software handling Japanese

• kterm
  I get kterm-6.2.0.tar.gz from ftp://SunSITE.sut.ac.jp/pub/archives/X11/contrib/applications/.
  Unfortunately, I can not compile kterm with SGI's /usr/bin/X11/xmkmf and /bin/cc. I also try to gcc instead of /bin/cc, I failed. This depends on my environment, however, I find .../xfree86-3.3.3.1/bin/xmkmf on machine. When I use this xmkmf, I can build kterm.
  When you start the kterm, you may indicate Japanese fonts like below.

          kterm -fl "-*-fixed-medium-r-normal--14-*" -km euc -sb
         

  You can find the usable Japanese font name with seeing fonts.dir file or using xfontsel command.
• nkf
  Getting nkf171.shar from http://www.freebsd.org/ports/japanese.html. This compile has no problem at my environment.

When you come to here, there are xemacs, netscape and kterm with Japanese handling, you may do your jobs.

Print with non Japanese PS printer

• k2ps, a2psj, a2ps-jp, kanjips
  On the web, there are some information which translate ps files with Japanese font to bitmapped ps. Command names are k2ps, a2psj and kanjips. However, I can not found these commands or, I can not compile it (I only found the kanjips.).
• Using gs (this gs must be able to display Japanese.)
  If your gs can display Japanese, gs can expand Japanese code to bitmap. So, you can expand your PS file with Japanese code to bitmapped PS. I wrote a small script program to do it and I can print out with PS printer without Japanese fonts. First, you make ps file with some command like a2ps. Second, you translate your ps file with jps2ps.sh. This script make bitmapped PS file.

Software

• Acroread
  
  • Some distribution includes acroread. If not, get the acroread from Adobe, Acroread page. Download the English version. Follow the Adobe's instruction.
  • Download the jpnfont.tar.gz from Adobe, then install it also. (I do not know why this link is hard to find...) Follow the included installation file. I installed linux-508.tar.gz and this jpnfont.tar.gz it's fine.

SGI Tips

• Keys shift + ctrl + F12 + 10 key's `/ ' combination can restart the X server.

Windows XP (Deutsch Fassung) Tips

• Japanische Umwelt.
  • Bitte geh Systemsteuerung -- Regions-und Sprachoptionen.
  • Regionale Einstellungen, Japanisch
  • Sprachen, Details -- wäh Japaniche und markieren Dateien für ostasiatische Sprachen installieren.
  • Erstmal installieren Sie ostasiatische Sprachen, währen Ja. und reboot.
  • Aber Windows XP seems not yet multilingual (might be bilingual English + a language), you can not play Japanese games without changing this. So, I have some Japanese game and German game. But I can play these games with changing the language, but you need to switch and reboot. (I heard Multilingual means you can use any language without switching the system status.)
• Japanese OK dot.com (In Japanese)

Build a desktop

• 2008-1-26(Sat): I did not know the power supply itself can not start without any connection. So I bought a new powe supply. Then I found out I forget to connect powe switch cable. The power supply was not broken.

Others

• I carried Linux machine to this Institute. I forget timezone setting suitable to Germany. I only adjust clock without changing timezone (JST). Then, that makes DHCP lease time very short. My machine lost connections every one hour.
  With Linux, change timezone using setup command to CEST (Berlin time) and adjust the clock, this is resolved.