The basic situation of the culture of Linux operating system

Linux currently has more than 9 million users worldwide and has more than 100,000 users in China, with a growth rate of over 200% last year. According to statistics published by ios++, Linux occupies 28% of the total number of Web servers worldwide, 5% more than the second Windows NT, and is more widely used in China.

The promotion of an operating system in China depends largely on the ability of the software running on it to handle Chinese. Linux was born abroad, its history less than 10 years, but because it is the most popular free UNIX operating system unique charm, many other Unix systems on the Chinese software has been ported to Linux, some specifically for Linux design Chinese software has emerged, The Chinese environment on Linux is being perfected in a step-by-step way.

A Chinese environment should generally have Chinese display input and printing functions, in the current Internet environment should also include English-Chinese dictionary and internal code conversion tools and so on. The following will introduce the various Chinese software on the Linux platform respectively.

Character Chinese environment

The Chinese terminal in character environment is a very useful tool for small memory users and system administrators, the Chinese console is divided into direct operation hardware and call Svgalib two ways, the input method mostly uses Cxterm tit format and xcin cin format.

Chdrv is a Chinese terminal simulation program running on the VGA/SVGA console. Chdrv is maintained by Taiwan's Wang You, the latest version is chdrv-1.0.10, which can be downloaded from ftp://linux.cis.nctu.edu.tw/packages/chinese/chdrv/, and the Chdrv feature must be started with root To support multiple virtual terminals.

The biggest difference between yact and Chdrv is that the yact is displayed through Svgalib, and if your svgalib does not contain the display card data you are using, you may not be able to use the system. Yact features support for 1024x768 resolution and 24-point array of fonts. Download address for ftp://linux.cis.nctu.edu.tw/packages/chinese/yact/yactp4.tar.gz

BCS16: Because yact needs to use Svgalib 1024x768 mode, display card support is not very good, BCS16 is to address this shortcoming by the Yact modified. It only needs 640x480 resolution, so it can be performed on most of the display cards. Download address for Ftp://linux.cis.nctu.edu.tw/packages/chinese/bcs/bcs007a.tgz

Wzce is for the Chinese system, is shareware, support a variety of input methods, can be downloaded in ftp://ftp.ihep.ac.cn/pub/chinese/system/wzce-linux-elf-2.22n.tgz.

CCE is adapted from the BCS16, support GB within the code, by Tsinghua University He Yue Development. can be downloaded in ftp://ftp.turbolinux.com.cn/pub/chinese/system/.

A4tty can support both Big5 and GBK, which can be downloaded at ftp://linux.okstation.com/.

Kongb by the author from the Japanese version of Kon Transplant, can be run on Linux and FreeBSD. Download in Ftp://ftp.turbolinux.com.cn/pub/chinese/system.

Chinese software under X Window

The Chinese software under X window can be divided into two ways: separate application software and Chinese platform. The first Chinese software to appear is cxterm. This is a modified xterm, can be directly in the term input and display Chinese, support Big5, GB, Hz and other internal code, download the address for ftp://ftp.ifcss.org/pub/software/x-win/cxterm/. The second is Taiwan's XCIN+RXVT, which uses a wide range of input solutions, characterized by the addition of XA to input Chinese in different X window applications. GB version download address is ftp://ftp.ihep.ac.cn/pub/chinese/system/xcingb-2.2.tar.gz.

At present, there are two ways to implement the Chinese platform under X window, one is to use the packaging principle (wrapper): "Packaging" (WRAP) scheme utilizes the preload mechanism of many UNIX systems running dynamically connected programs, to X Window System function Dynamic Library of some functions in the "packaging" and replacement, so that the implementation of support for Chinese display, and Chinese input server connection to achieve Chinese input.

Using the preload mechanism of dynamic connections, we can "wrap" some functions of the X Window System so that the functions that were used to process ASCII code can handle ASCII and Chinese encodings differently depending on the input, and then make the "wrapper" function into a shared library. Use the Set ld―preload variable to make an application call the X function after wrapping, instead of directly calling functions in the X function library, so that they support Chinese processing without changing the source code of the application!

In general, you need to modify the X11 function for display strings such as xdrawstring. At present, the Chinese platform for implementing the packaging mechanism has XA, zhwin, Zwinpro and so on.

Xa is the earliest packaging procedures, relatively simple; Zhwin was developed by Mr. Hang Min, based on Chinput, Zwinpro for Yu Mingxian and Mr. Chen Xiangyang, more complete, able to support multiple internal code and screen capture, and support true Type Fonts.

There is already an X Server that can support true Type fonts, which enables you to implement the FreeType scaling feature of the Chinese word under X by using this library.

Supports GBK and can be downloaded in ftp://ftp.turbolinux.com.cn. For other Chinese software such as: Chpower, Hztty, Cdict, Xdict, Xemacs+mule, HC, LyX, EZWGL, Chinput, no more than one by one details are described here.