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Japanese on Linux Part I

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Abstract:

This article takes a brief overview at how to make your Linux system Japanese-capable.

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Introduction

This article is intended for Linux users who want to use Japanese on their Linux systems but aren't really prepared to read documentation written in Japanese. In other words, I assume you are a Japanese newbie. ;-)

There are basically two ways to get Japanese into your computer: the easy and the hard. The easy way is to install a Japanese Linux distribution on your computer. If you do that, the moment you finish installing Linux, you also finish installing the bundles of software needed for using Japanese. Alternatively, you can do it the hard way: hunting Japanese packages across the Web, downloading and if necessary, compiling, and finally installing them over your existing Linux system. Actually, this isn't as hard as it sounds, but it depends very much on your configuration. More on this later.

I will refer you to a lot of online Web resources, and some of them are, unfortunately, available only in Japanese. But even if you don't understand Japanese, I think you'll definitely prefer seeing Japanese characters displayed correctly on your browser rather than just pure gibberish. Therefore, I'll end this section with a quick no-brainer about how to make your browser, specifically Netscape Communicator 4.x, displays Japanese correctly.

1. Fire up your Netscape Communicator/Navigator.
2. Click View -> Encoding. You should be presented with a list of possible language encoding methods.
3. Choose Japanese (Auto-Detect). This setting should work for most Japanese webpages, but sometimes when it fails to work, try choosing Japanese (Shift_JIS) or Japanese (EUC-JP).

For your information, I'm using Netscape Communicator 4.05 that comes with Redhat 5.1, and sure enough, it displays Japanese okay.

Using Japanese Distributions

This is, in my opinion, the easiest way to use Japanese on Linux. If you are planning to install Linux and at the same time you want to have Japanese support, don't look any further! Included below is a table listing the Japanese Linux distributions I know of with links to their respective homepages plus some remarks.

The language column refers to the language the homepage is in. Please don't get discouraged just because they are all in Japanese. Some of the distributions, namely Plamo Linux and Vine Linux, offer free downloads through anonymous FTP.

I've tried installing Plamo Linux 1.3 and TurboLinux 3.0-J beta5 and I'm happy to say that they met most of my needs.

Installing Japanese Packages

You've already installed a Linux distribution on your system and you don't want to install a brand new one just for the sake of using Japanese. Well, that's fine with me. You just need to grab the various Japanese software packages and install them on top of your Linux system. Sounds easy, isn't it? Wrong! First, where on Earth can you lay your hands on those Japanese software packages? And how would you know which one to choose? Luckily for you, some volunteer groups have kindly packaged for us a nice bundle of Japanese software ready to use. Just visit their homepages and download the packages targeted for your system.

As of the time of writing, Japanese packages for glibc-based systems are few. libc-based systems like Slackware 3.5, S.u.S.E. 5.3 and OpenLinux 1.3 should encounter no major problems installing and using Japanese. As PJE has provided a well-written PJE-HOWTO, I won't delve into its installation details. libc-based Linux users would do fine using PJE 0.1.5. As for glibc-based Linux users (e.g. Redhat 5.x), here are some tips:

• try using PJE-0.3alpha.
• download the RPMs prepared by JRPM.
• compile from source.
• the glibc on some systems, for example Redhat 5.2, cannot handle Japanese locale correctly, so you have to install libwcsmbs and wcsmbs-locale beforehand.

Conclusion

This article tries to give an outline of installing Japanese extensions onto your Linux systems. It gives some information about the various Japanese Linux distributions available and installing Japanese packages onto libc-based systems, with some pointers on how to get glibc-based systems to run Japanese applications thrown in as well. But there are still a lot of things this article fails to address, things like how to read and write using what application, inputting Japanese in Netscape, kana-kanji conversion and so on. But don't worry, as the Japanese packages usually come with a lot of detailed documentation included as well, and you are advised to make full use of them.

This is the first installment of a series of articles on "Japanese on Linux" I'm writing. I haven't really given any thought on what should be written in Part II, perhaps a tutorial on installing onto glibc-based systems? Feedback on this and future articles is most welcome.

For more information:

• Japan Linux Users Group at http://www.linux.or.jp/ (English homepage available).
• The Tokyo Linux Users Group at http://tlug.linux.or.jp/ (English).
• Plamo Linux 1.3 Page at http://www.gihyo.co.jp/SD/plamo/index.html (Japanese).
• Japanized Netscape in Linux at http://kichijoji.mech.tuat.ac.jp/~rob/NetscapeV.html (English).
• USENET: fj.os.linux and japan.comp.linux (mainly Japanese postings, but English should be okay).
• Ken Lunde, Understanding Japanese Information Processing, O'Reilly & Associates, 1993.

These are in addition to the various resources I've mentioned here and there in the article.

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