Browse Web in Chinese (Big5) under X-Window
by using Netscape

Netscape 3.0x

If you use 'cxterm', you can just use Chinese fonts that you had already installed for it to work with Netscape. But you need to do some font alias mapping to make Netscape be able to find these fonts.

The basic idea is that Netscape try to find fontnames end with

    big5-0
    big5.et-0
    big5.et.ext-0
    big5.etext-0
    big5.hku-0
    big5.hku-1
    big5.pc-0

    xlsfonts | grep big5

Basic steps

• First of all, you need to get taipei*.bdf - Big5 Chinese fonts.
• Second, you need to setup 'Netscape.ad' into your application defaults directory.
• Third, set 'Options/General/Fonts' as 'x-x-big5' and 'Options -> Language Encoding' as 'Chinese (Big5)'.

Detail steps to set it up

1. Get the Netscape for your platform from Netscape's FTP server.

I think everyone should know how.

2. Get 'taipei*.bdf' fonts and install it.

You can use 'archie -s taipei24' to find out which FTP server carry it.
or you can connect to here to get following files:

     taipei16.bdf
     taipei24.bdf
     taipei24k.bdf
     taipeil24.bdf

The original site carry it is ftp://ifcss.org/pub/software/fonts/big5/bdf

If you are the system adminstrator, you can install these fonts to the system font directory. You can find out the fonts path of your system by

   xset q

If you are just a user of that Unix system, you can install fonts in your home directory as followed:

   # in your home directory
   mkdir xfonts
   cd xfonts
   # move fonts to this directory.
   # create or update 'fonts.dir' by
   mkfontdir .

The content of 'fonts.dir' in this directory should have following lines:

    taipei16.bdf taipei16
    taipei24.bdf taipei24
    taipeik24.bdf taipeik24
    taipeil24.bdf taipeil24

Please add following mapping into your 'fonts.alias' file:

-taipei-ming16-medium-r-normal-*-16-160-*-*-*-*-big5-0 taipei16
-taipei-ming-medium-r-normal-*-24-240-*-*-*-*-big5-0 taipei24
-taipei-kai-medium-r-normal-*-24-240-*-*-*-*-big5-0 taipeik24
-taipei-li-medium-r-normal-*-24-240-*-*-*-*-big5-0 taipeil24

Then add this new font directory into your font path by

    xset fp+ $HOME/xfonts

You can check whether the font is installed successfully or not by

    xlsfonts | grep big5

3. Setup the Netscape

Run Netscape
Select "Options/General.../Fonts" and
Set "For the Encoding" as "Taiwanese (x-x-big5)".
Set "Use the Proportional Font" as "Ming(Taipei)", and remember to click "Size:" as "24.0", even though it's the only choice.
Set "Use the Fixed Font" same as proportional font.
Set "Options -> Language Encoding" as "Chinese (Big5)".

4. That's all. Enjoy the Web surfing in Chinese !

Test it with our Home Page in Chinese.