Japanese Language Support
You may wish to visit a shareware or freeware site to get language support cheaply. For the Macintosh, I do not recommend Zephir because it doesn't work too well. Unicorn editor requires some software that can be difficult to obtain if you have system 7.1 on the Mac. For the IBM, I found a viewer for Japanese, but the character Kaminari comes out Ude. So, in summary, freeware and shareware programs are not to be trusted.
So Japanese Language Kit (which costs a pretty penny~$150? or is it $75) is probably best of all. (Until I find some cool program or write one).
As for IBM's. I found that one program worked fairly well for editing Japanese documents. Its called NJ Star Japanese WP (a shareware program). But like when using Microsoft 5.0 with Japanese language Kit on the Mac, it tends to freeze often and has a bad user interface.
If you want Japanese word processing software, japanese teachtext or simple text (on the mac) is usually best. Solowriter is good also, but it takes up more memory.
IBM's have very good Japanese software too:
- For Windows 3.1, I bought a program called WinV that worked fairly well. At least enough to satisfy my needs.
- For Windows 95, UNIX, etc. I am using my system at work and so have no idea what is being used.
Visit my links at to get to the shareware site I used in the past. It probably contains more up to date software than what I have used in the past.
To Install Japanese Language kit on the Mac, first:
- Read the manual for your computer (That's what I do)
- Then read the installation manual for Language Kit.
Unfortunately, it doesn't tell you everything.
- Check to make sure you have the right system (ex: System 7.1.1) installed on your
Mac checking under the apple menu. Language software has different rules for different systems, so WRITE IT DOWN!
- DELETE ANY VIRUS PROTECT PROGRAMS INCLUDING PREFRENCE FILES FROM YOUR
SYSTEM FOLDER. These can cause problems when installing certain types of software.
- Restart the computer holding down the shift key: This turns off
the extensions temporarily. Do not use any other method of turning off
the extensions! If you try another way to be cool, take a cold shower, because you are just being a fool.
(Just for your info, turn off all extensions in this manner whenever
you install something new on a mac. Don't think you're cool by not doing
so. It just hurts your mac.)
- Insert the install disks and run the install program doing a
regular install. No fancy stuff, PLEASE.
- When your computer restarts, Change "Text" to Japanese and "Views" {Text and views are usually in the control panels folder} to an
Osaka font that looks good. Drag all Japanese programs to the "Japanese
Language Register"(A Program) in the folder called Apple Extras.
You should now be done.
- In Netscape, Change the font to Osaka under 'Preferences', 'Text'.
- Lastly, choose 'Japanese Auto-Detect' under 'OPTIONS', 'DOCUMENT ENCODING' in Netscape.
- For newer computers with IE 4-IE 7, on the PC (they're not called IBMs anymore), you need to
change the Document encoding to Japanese Auto-Detect. UTF-8 will not work with this page yet,
since it was developed before the Unicode standard came out. If you don't have that encode, either
your computer will auto-detect it and download it, or you might need your Microsoft Office CD install Disk
and Windows Install Disk and you might need to add Japanese support to your system. Its something
I have done periodically. I haven't used English macs since System 7 (since then its only been
Japanese ones so I'm not sure what needs to be done now).