Software Requirements for Reading Chinese Texts at this Site

To read Chinese texts on-line, you need a GB or Big5 based Chinese viewer. To read downloaded texts, you can use either a Chinese viewer or a Chinese word processor. If you wish to download many GB articles at once, you may download the corresponding zip files and then open them with a zip utility.

There are many Chinese software programs on the market. If you do not want to pay for one yet, you can download one from the Web and try it out first. For the Windows95 users who do not know where to start, we hereby recommend a viewer called Njwin. This viewer can be downloaded from the following Web addresses: http://bjs.org/software/njwin102.zip, or ftp://ftp.ifcss.org/pub/software/ms-win/c-sys (look for file njwin10.zip). Since this is a zip file, you need to unzip it first, using Pkzip, Win Zip, or any other zip utility.

If you do not have a zip utility, you can download a DOS zip utility called Pkzip2 from the following Web address: http://bjs.org/software/pkz204g.exe, or ftp://ftp.ncsa.uiuc.edu/PC/Contrib (look for file pkz204g.exe). This is a self-extracting zip file. Suppose you put it in a directory called zipware. By double-clicking the file (in Windows) or typing the file name pkz204g (in DOS, with zipware being the current directory), you will receive many files in the zipware directory. Once you have edited the autoexec.bat file in your computer in accordance with the instructions in the Installation section of the Manual file in zipware, you are ready to use Pkzip2.

Suppose you have downloaded the file njwin10.zip in a directory called nj. When C: is the current directory, the DOS command to unzip this file using Pkzip2 is:

pkunzip nj\njwin10.zip nj

This command will bring you two files in the nj directory: setup.exe and readme. You can install Njwin by double-clicking the file setup.exe.

Njwin is very easy to use. Basically, you keep your Web browser and Njwin open at the same time. If you open a non-Chinese document on the Web or in your computer, Njwin does nothing. If your open a Chinese document, Njwin is automatically engaged and makes the Web browser display Chinese text. For more information on using Njwin, please read the file readme.

The most popular Web browser is Netscape. If you do not have Netscape, you can download a copy from the following Web site: http://bjs.org/software/n32e30.exe, or http://home.mcom.com.

Software programs available on the Web change constantly. Please check back on us for updated information. Thank you for visiting us.