Re: [Very OT] anyone experienced with Chinese character set
Re: [Very OT] anyone experienced with Chinese character set
- Subject: Re: [Very OT] anyone experienced with Chinese character set
- From: "Matthew W. Taylor" <email@hidden>
- Date: Tue, 26 Jun 2007 01:27:29 -0500 (CDT)
- Importance: Normal
Janine,
Perhaps I can give you some advice off-list. As part of the application
development that I've done for Northwestern University, some of the my
best work includes placement testing application written in WebObjects to
place students in the appropriate level foreign language classes. Two of
our language placement tests are in Chinese: one using traditional
characters, the other using simplified characters. Aside from the type of
characters used, the test contents are exactly the same. Because, as
others have pointed out, there is a one-to-one mapping between simplified
and traditional characters, it was possible to convert the data wholesale.
For what it's worth, all of our test data is stored in a PostgreSQL
database.
So, in short, I'm familiar with:
WO
PostgreSQL
Chinese
And to some extent:
Translation between simplified <-> traditional characters.
While some would argue that UTF-8 is a better encoding to use for Chinese
characters since it supports both versions of the characters in the same
character set (as well as every other language). I would argue, however,
that for uniquely Chinese text data, the use of either GB or Big5 is
probably advantageous. It ensures that the text data is either purely
Traditional characters or Simplified, depending upon which standard you
choose. This makes the data more consistent and conversion (at
presentation time) far more reliable. That said, I still used UTF-8
because the same database has content in 11 other languages.
-=- matthew
Matthew Taylor
Multimedia Learning Center
Northwestern University
> Chinese language could be officially represented by two format,
> Traditional
> Chinese and Simplified Chinese. As it stated, Traditional Chinese are the
> _old-style_ but very meaningful language that is used by Taiwanese.
> However, Simplified Chinese is the _simplified_ version of Traditional
> Chinese and are mainly used by Mainland China.
> Both are the same and only some of the characters are simplified, so to
> speak. Some could understand one or the other, but most of them
> understand
> both, I am one of those :)
>
> If your potential customer likes Simplified Chinese, most likely he is
> from
> mainland China / Hong Kong, more or less could tell...
>
> I have done little test on the language in unicode. However, they are
> different encoding method, e.g GB, Big5. I have not spent enough time to
> understand them.
> Also, you may need to watch out if they are not in unicode, it could be
> quite _a_ job!
>
> Either from Traditional to Simplified, an encoding translator usually
> required.
>
> Cheers
>
> Cheong Hee
>
>> Message: 4
>> Date: Sun, 24 Jun 2007 17:43:01 -0700
>> From: Ray Kiddy <email@hidden>
>> Subject: Re: [Very OT] anyone experienced with Chinese character set
>> issues?
>> To: webobjects-dev List <email@hidden>
>> Message-ID: <email@hidden>
>> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII; delsp=yes; format=flowed
>>
>>
>> On Jun 22, 2007, at 4:36 PM, Janine Sisk wrote:
>>
>>> This has absolutely nothing to do with WebObjects, but this is the
>>> most knowledgeable group of people I know so I hope you will
>>> indulge me. I've tried to Google but am not coming up with much,
>>> probably due to using the wrong keywords.
>>>
>>> We are talking to a prospective client whose site is entirely in
>>> Chinese. The data is stored in Postgres in Traditional Chinese,
>>> and is translated to Simplified Chinese for use by the site by a
>>> third-party program. This program has no English-language
>>> information available at all; I don't even know it's name. This
>>> is not a problem for their former vendor, who is in Hong Kong, but
>>> it's quite a bit of a problem for us.
>>>
>>> I would like to move them away from this program and onto a
>>> solution I can understand, but I have found very little information
>>> out there about how to do this conversion and why an extra program
>>> is even necessary. If anyone can explain this to me, or point me
>>> towards some information, I would really, really appreciate it.
>>>
>>> thanks,
>>>
>>> janine
>>>
>>
>> You might want to check with the people who do localization and
>> internationalization of Mozilla apps, such as Firefox. Most of their
>> newsgroups and irc channels are completely open.
>>
>> Let me know if you want more specific pointers, but going to
>> www.mozilla.org and looking for things related to Chinese might get
>> you some info and contacts.
>>
>> - ray
>>
>
>
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