Help! Characters for Windows...

gesang
 May 30, 2008, 05:22 PM posted in General Discussion

Hello everybody,

My Mac is in repair service..and am suffering because i miss Cpod sooooooo much...from time to time (like now) i can use my flatmates PC, but he doesn't have Chinese characters... :-(

He allowed me to install whatever i need...but he also doesn't have the Windows installation CD...

My question:

Is it possible to get what i need to install the "asian languages..." somewhere online? (for free?)...I didn't find anything by myself...

Anybody who has a good hint?

Help!!!;)

Gesang

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excuter
 May 30, 2008, 06:34 PM

I tried finding an IME but in the end I installed the windows IME...but I´ve heard there is an Google IME . you might give it a try...(I didn´t find it first, but ironically I searched it with google and found an article about it with an link to a site in chinese having the download link for it: )

http://dl.google.com/pinyin/GooglePinyinInstaller.exe

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gesang
 May 30, 2008, 06:39 PM

oh, it is not only the writing... i can not SEE any characters...i only see boxes... :-(

 

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excuter
 May 30, 2008, 06:46 PM

well, the problem is solved if you installed the IME (which is needed for both seeing characters and write characters)

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frances
 May 30, 2008, 06:47 PM

gesang - the problem is that WinXP doesn't come with a Unicode font with chinese character support. If you find one you'll be able to see the characters.

There may be one you can download from Microsoft - I'm not sure. These pages list some of the various free ones available online:

http://www.wazu.jp/gallery/Fonts_ChineseSimplified.html

http://www.wazu.jp/gallery/Fonts_ChineseTraditional.html

Once you get a TrueType Font file (.ttf), install it by dragging it into your c:\windows\fonts directory.

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excuter
 May 30, 2008, 06:52 PM

here are some chinese fonts to download for free:

http://www.sino.uni-heidelberg.de/edv/sinopc/chinese_fonts.htm

 

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excuter
 May 30, 2008, 06:58 PM

I´d recomment this one (it´s from the homepage)

http://www.sino.uni-heidelberg.de/edv/fonts/HDZB_36.TTF

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gesang
 May 30, 2008, 06:59 PM

thanks!!!, i will try this later..have to leave the computer now...my flatmate is back home...

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excuter
 May 30, 2008, 07:06 PM

^_^

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boran
 May 30, 2008, 07:07 PM

I assume you tried to enable East Asian language support and it asked for the Windows installation CD - sometimes you can enable support without it asking for the CD, depends on it how Windows was initially installed.

You can try the following downloads from Microsoft:

These will install the Chinese character fonts for you.  Open these pages in Internet Explorer to make the download go a bit smoother (the download validates you have an "official" version of Windows).

The other solution (non-technical) is to see if you can borrow someone else's Windows installation CD.  As long as its the same version of Windows, it should work as well.

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gesang
 May 31, 2008, 01:02 PM

Ha!

Thanks to all of you!!!

You rescued my chinese learning progress and my weekend ;-)! And all the days until i get my notebook back!:-)

Thanks frances, for your last sentence...(about c/:...) ..i am a total Windows idiot...i was happy to have this hint!

Thanks executer, i tried some of the uni-heidelberg fonts...for some reasons i need one of the "bold" types for this computer...when I checked the font after restarting the computer by looking at a lesson dialog in Cpod two of the  "light" types I tested were very hard to see...

Thanks boran, this sounds like the official way to install the fonts for windows, but I was afraid of downloading it from microsoft, when I read the words :"validation required" there and i dont know where my flatmate got all the programms from ;)!

Thanks again! Gesa