[KS] Re: Using han'gul fonts

Joshua Margolis jmargoli at nimbus.ocis.temple.edu
Fri Nov 19 12:05:11 EST 1999


Things are really heating up on the list again. I didn't intend for that,
though it does seem to happen from time to time. I just can't stand people
making factually incorrect authoritative statements. Perhaps I'm just being
too much the lawyer, but I think it's important that when one offers advice
to others, one properly qualifies the basis on which that advice is founded
so as not to mislead anyone, and of course to CYA.

Since I didn't receive a copy of my first post from the list, I'll assume
there was a problem and repost the URL in case nobody got it.

http://officeupdate.microsoft.com/korea/downloadcatalog/dldWord.htm

You can grab the Arae Han'gul filter for Word, which has been around for a
few years already, from this page. Since it's on the Office Update site, you
may be required to register your copy of Office to download files. If that
presents a problem for anyone (and of course it shouldn't since we're all
registered users, right?), drop me an e-mail off-list and I'll send the file
to you. It's 778K.

As far as e-mail standards, I think there are two issues. The first is the
choice of character set. Most Korean e-mail is in the EUC-KR character set,
which is an 8-bit version of KS_C_5601-1987 based on AT&T's Extended Unix
Code (EUC) standard. There is also ISO-2022-KR, which is a 7-bit version of
KS_C_5601-1987, the so-called "wansOng" code. Korean e-mail should be sent
using EUC-KR/8-bit Where it is necessary for someone to use 7-bit encoding
(because they know a particular mail transport agent does not support 8-bit
encoding, they should use EUC-KR/Base64 or EUC-KR/QP (Quoted Printable), not
ISO-2022-KR, which is being phased out.

See http://matilda.hanyang.ac.kr/charset/index.shtml.
See  also http://pantheon.yale.edu/~jshin/faq/qa9.html.

The other problem, alluded to above and mentioned previously, is the message
encoding and what some SMTP servers do to it (i.e., truncating the high bit
off of each byte). At this point, most mail transfer agents support 8-bit
encoding, though one still runs into the occasional one that does not, in
which case 8-bit encoded messages will get trashed.

I would like to take a moment to point out something that ought to be
obvious -- most Korean e-mail is exchanged among Koreans living in Korea and
running some version of MS Korean Windows. They have no problem sending and
receiving (i.e., reading) each other's mail. My point is that for the
overwhelming majority of users, there is no problem and thus little
incentive to develop a 'solution'. That's why companies like Twinbridge and
Unionway came along. Microsoft has finally caught onto the act and offered
the Global IMEs as an intermediate solution to the problem. The better
solution is found in Windows 2000, where Microsoft finally got around to
integrating Asian language support into every version of Windows. Now if
only they could do something about those pesky code pages....

In all fairness, I don't think it's appropriate to refer to the Global IMEs
as "Micro$oft Global IME"s. Microsoft does distribute them for FREE, as it
does with Internet Explorer, Outlook Express, etc. They also offer
substantial discounts on most other Microsoft products to both professors
and students. For Bill Gates, the issue isn't money. He's got plenty of that
already.


Josh



> Well it's always possible that later developments are coming up of which I
> am not aware, but I guess that's in software developments inevitable. But
I
> guess you have different experiences than many others, and your statements
> are just as firm.
>
> At the moment there are (as far as I know) two different standards, with
> Unionway and hangul 97 I can read both (depending on the provider) Not so
> with the Micro$oft Global IME, tried it on several computer with different
> software installed.





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