Chinese Genealogy - What is Unicode?

« What is Unicode? »

Welcome Guest. Please Login or Register.
May 24, 2013, 5:37pm

Chinese Genealogy :: Shop Talk :: Software for Chinese Genealogy :: What is Unicode?

Author

Topic: What is Unicode? (Read 907 times)

Doug
Member

member is offline

[avatar]

click icons to contact

Joined: May 2008
Gender: Male

Posts: 518
Location: Modesto, CA, USA

What is Unicode?
« Thread Started on Dec 26, 2008, 5:19pm »

Unicode is a technique to display non-Western characters as text. This allows one to manipulate the text by enlarging, cutting, pasting, and copying. It is a computer coding method that, if you program does not allow Unicode translation, looks like gibberish (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unicode). Most North American computers using Windows XP or earlier versions will not translate Unicode unless you activate the feature. Windows Vista and Apple computers already have this feature activated.

Those in North America with older computers will need to activate Unicode BOTH in their computers and their web browsers (for example Internet Explorer).

If you are looking for a computer based genealogy software program, please look at this Wikipedia comparison chart: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_genealogy_software. There is a chart with a listing of programs that display Unicode.

There are more discussions under the Forum Topic: [Tips on Posting] [Posting with Chinese Characters] (http://siyigenealogy.proboards28.com/ind....play&thread=720)

Doug

Link to Post - Back to Top IP:

Logged

Lack of Chinese language skills should not deter one from studying their Chinese Family Heritage~^click

Doug
Member

member is offline

[avatar]

click icons to contact

Joined: May 2008
Gender: Male

Posts: 518
Location: Modesto, CA, USA

Re:Unicode & How to Display
« Reply #1 on Jan 29, 2009, 12:06am »

I forgot to explain how to display Unicode Chinese characters on a Windows computer. As per the previous post, one needs to configure both the browser and the computer to read Unicode and/or East Asian Languages for most North American Windows computers .

To configure the browser:
Here is a forum post to get Chinese characters to display in your browser: http://siyigenealogy.proboards28.com/ind....lay&thread=720
For Firefox and Internet Explorer, to view Chinese characters: Go to the top of the browser, click on [View], then click on [Character Encoding or Encoding], then click on [Unicode(UT8)]. Sometimes if you change the pages, the Encoding slips back to Western Encoding and you may need to change the Character Encoding again.

To configure your computer:
If your North American computer runs Vista or Mac OS, then it is probably already enabled for East Asian languages (Chinese). Otherwise, with Windows XP, click [Start], [Control Panel], [Regional and Language Options], tab to [Languages], under “Supplemental Language Support” check the box: Install files for East Asian Languages. You might need your installation disk. You should need to do this only once.

Doug

Link to Post - Back to Top IP:

Logged

Lack of Chinese language skills should not deter one from studying their Chinese Family Heritage~^click

Doug
Member

member is offline

[avatar]

click icons to contact

Joined: May 2008
Gender: Male

Posts: 518
Location: Modesto, CA, USA

Re: What is Unicode?
« Reply #2 on Feb 5, 2012, 6:22pm »

This is a nice explanation of Unicode. The article is a better explanation than what I have written, confirming the popularity and ubiquity. As the Windows XP operating system is being phased out, the use of Unicode is becoming transparent. Less and less will we have to explain to people how to adjust their computers to view Chinese characters

Official Google Blog:Unicode over 60 percent of the web^click

Link to Post - Back to Top IP:

Logged

Lack of Chinese language skills should not deter one from studying their Chinese Family Heritage~^click

Click Here To Make This Board Ad-Free