Foreign text

Making multilingual sites on an English OS

[bill]

This thread [webmasterworld.com] made me curious...Just how does everybody make foreign language sites without a native OS? I'll bet there are a lot of different ways we go about it, and maybe there's a better way to skin this cat. ;)

I have had good luck using Windows 2000's multilingual capabilities, particularly for Asian languages. You can install Global IMEs for Japanese, Chinese, Korean and other languages, and then input that text into most Windows applications. Office 2000 incorporates a lot of these capabilities as well.

Just last night I threw together a Japanese site and found myself using NotePad more than anything ;). I had a large Word file filled with Japanese text and FrontPage 2K for an HTML editor. The first thing you learn is that Word and FrontPage should never be used together... I take all of the text out of Word and drop it into NotePad, then using FrontPage, with all of the Microsoft code changing nasties turned off, making the site was a breeze...time consuming though. You have to do all the work in the HTML view of FrontPage as the WYSIWYG interface chokes on double-byte characters.

How do you guys do it?

[caine]

certainly an interesting thread,

to be honest with you, i have never tried, with unicode, as of yet, though is something i will be getting involved in soon. Though i can't quite understand why you use Frontpage - i hate it. Big Dreamweaver / notepad Fan.

[bill]

i can't quite understand why you use Frontpage

Not to open this can of worms again...but for support of multilingual web development, even the Macromedia site's FP/Dreamweaver comparison chart tips their hat to Microsoft on this one...Microsoft has more localized versions of its software than Macromedia...The company I work for decided on FrontPage back in 1996 on this basis, so I've become the international subsidiary's FrontPage support desk as well ;) I'm stuck.

Actually the newer versions of FP don't do anything to your code, and its not a bad tool if you know what you're doing. I'll admit there is some real garbage out there that was made by FP, but at least they're not responsible for all that needless Flash out there ;)

How's Dreamweaver with double byte code on an English OS? Can you do direct input into the WYSIWYG? I know that the native language versions will work fine with a native OS, but how's it work on an English OS?

[Woz]

>Not to open this can of worms again
Yes, please lets not open a can of worms with one and agree "eash to his own" while keeping this to a sensible debate.
<puts gavel down>

My only experience in cross lingual stuff was writing bi-lingual databases using English Access 97 on Chinese Win 98 which seemed to work ok. I cannot open the files on a pure English OS though which is a tad frustrating. Filemaker Pro didn't like multi languages regardless of OS which I found interesting.

Bill, is the FP you are using a Japanese version or English version? I know that most of my Chinese Webster collegues used a Chinese version of FP which integrated with the text input programs quite well. I am surprised that your FP choked on the double byte stuff and can only surmise it is an English version. Correct?

And I agree about Word not integrating with FP in any language. I also always go via notepad - always.

Onya
Woz

[bill]

is the FP you are using a Japanese version or English version?

In this case I'm talking about an English OS, with English FP. I have Japanese OSs as well and Japanese FP, but it's on my slow PC, and I was in a hurry :)

Supposedly this is not an issue with FrontPage 2002 (XP).

I always envied my friends with Macs for their ability to snap in a language pack and use Asian languages without having to partition their drives and dual boot their systems (and pay twice as much to get the software in both languages). But the new Win2K and WinXP don't seem to have this problem anymore...thank god

[Eric_Jarvis]

I think my process differs from Bill's only in that I do all the final work in Arachnophilia and use FP only if I'm having problems with the characters (has happened in Arabic and Japanese)

FP is great for Unicode...but seems less useful when using specific encodings...I'm also working on moving towards xhtml which Arachnophilia is a lot happier with than FP

biggest problem I've had is trying to add text to images...but Jasc say they will shortly be making a version of PSP that can use Unicode, so that will cease to be a worry

[rjohara]

In exploring how to do my Chinese page, I came across this very nice case study from a library in Australia that developed a multi-lingual page in English, Chinese, Vietnamese, and Amharic. They were able to do it successfully with Unicode, because it was designed to be a portal page for users within their library, so they had control over what was installed on all the machines. A visitor from outside might not be able to see it well, but that was not their main concern. It is a nice example of what will be possible, I suppose, with Unicode:

[members.ozemail.com.au...]

[Eric_Jarvis]

Unicode is utterly wonderful

but

Japan, Hong Kong, Taiwan and Russia got onto the web before Unicode got going...which is an utter pain since it means we'll all be dealing with a range of encoding for quite some while yet

[bill]

Interesting article Bob. Unfortunately a lot of the methods discussed aren't widely supported by today's browsers. Maybe in a few years this might be a viable way to design multilingual websites. I look forward to the day because all these encoding standards get confusing.

Unicode is something I've always avoided. It's not because I don't like it, I think it's a great idea, but it has awful compatibility problems with Japanese Windows and software. I recall that there were certain versions of Netscape that actually froze up if they encountered Unicode encoding on a web page. There were all sorts of rendering problems with different software as well. A standard mantra among Japanese webmasters is 'just say no to unicode'.

[Chirlind]

I'm just a web hobbyist, but I keep a Japanese lyrics page...
Just tried the Dreamweaver thing out.
I tried to edit an existing Japanese page with Dreamweaver 4 WYSIWIG mode without much luck. I normally cut-and-paste from NJStar Japanese Word Processor (I don't have Japanese OS nor Office 2000) to Notepad or directly input using Twinbridge Japanese Partner into Notepad, but cut-and-paste nor direct input didn't work. The resulting codes pasted or typed in Dreamweaver did not show up properly unlike the rest of the text made before using Dreamweaver. Setting Dreamweaver's font to MS Gothic, MS Mincho and restarting didn't work either. I haven't tried Word's Save as HTML function but direct input using Twinbridge JP works there.

[bill]

Welcome to WebmasterWorld Chirlind! :)

I'm familiar with NJStar and TwinBridge as tools to input Japanese...but I've never used them. I thought TwinBridge let you use Japanese in any Windows software. If you have that, why can't you just directly input the Japanese into Dreamweaver?

[Eric_Jarvis]

I've just gone live with the Unicode version of our Japanese site...the shift_JIS will be up by the weekend

it's been no problem importing the characters directly into Arachnophilia in either encoding...I think FP is on the verge of being uninstalled :)

[bill]

Good luck with the Japanese site Eric!

I've been working with a Chinese site a lot on FP lately, and found that as long as I have the site encoding set properly, and I'm only working in FP, not cutting and pasting from other apps, FP is handling everything fine. I think the difficulties I encountered earlier were due to Office, not FP.

I would like to give Arachnophilia a try though...maybe when I find some free time ;)