Info needed on Chinese type

[M_Blackburn@adobeforums.com]

One of my customers wants to circumvent going outside for Chinese type by his setting own. (I work in-house; the customer is a colleague.) He's looking into Chinese word processors such as shown at : [[url]http://www.njstar.com/?nanjistar.com/][/url]

My experience with these is is very limited, but my impression is that programs like this aren't compatible with what I think of as typesetting and I'm looking for some input into how we should be approaching the issue.

[Dirck_Van_Lieu@adobeforums.com]

I know very little about this, but I have an older version of NJ Star that has been replaced for my modest needs by the MS Chinese IME and Word. Will Word documents import suitably into InDesign for his printing purposes?

[Richard_A._Ross@adobeforums.com]

XP come with Chinese support. Use the Arial Unicode font and you can set pretty much any languages include Chinese. Any TTF chinese font can be used

[Richard_A._Ross@adobeforums.com]

Will Word documents import suitably into InDesign for his printing purposes?




works fine. Also you can directly enter chinese character using your favorite IME.

[Dirck_Van_Lieu@adobeforums.com]

Thanks Richard.

[M_Blackburn@adobeforums.com]

Thanks for the response. I'm still in the dark about how these things work. First, I don't know what you mean by an IME. Second, I don't understand how Arial Unicode can be used with any TT Chinese font.

Neither do I understand the implications of XP support. I will be moving to XP pro soon, but W2K seems to support Chinese as well; however, Control Panel/Regional Options/Language settings, has only English checked (and the context info in ID's glyph palette indicates Korean encoding (¿)). Is that irrelevant if the text is used in the regular western way of left to right rather than right to left or top to bottom? Besides Arial unicode, there are several Japanese fonts that come with ID and one that I suspect is Chinese, but if these fonts all have multiple languages in them, would they be interchangeable at all?

You seem to be suggesting that as long as I have the fonts installed, it doesn't matter where the Chinese copy is typeset from. Could all problems (i.e. my confusion) be sorted out simply by buying OpenType fonts and using them just as I would were they English? And what about language processors such as I mentionned; are they more or less keyboard switchers to facilitate typesetting or do they have an impact on how the text is translated on a computer without the program?

Truth is, I'm having a hard time knowing what to ask.

[Dirck_Van_Lieu@adobeforums.com]

MB,

IME stands for Input Method Editor. If a specific language is not included in your OS, check for it in Windows Update.

This screen shot <http://www.acksite.com/lmpost/chid.jpg> shows "CH" selected to activate the Chinese IME. With the pin yin "ni hao" typed on my standard keyboard, the IME displays the proper Chinese characters in InDesign and other applications. And yes, this font "Adobe Ming Std" is on my system.

I probably know just enough about this to cause trouble. I hope I'm not causing you any!

[Gabriel_Ayala@adobeforums.com]

Truth is, I'm having a hard time knowing what to ask.




If you are looking for the most versatile fonts, yes, you should get OpenType.

[donghong@adobeforums.com]

can key chinese if you need keying help