Inputting non-Unicode characters

[Judith M. Amory]

A correspondent in China (an elderly woman) tells me she cannot read the Chinese characters in my messages. Another Chinese friend tells me that is because her computer probably is not set to read Unicode and she doesn't know how to switch to Unicode. I was surprised because I thought everything was Unicode now, and it's been years since I had the problem of characters being unreadable.

Is there any way I can change the coding in my messages so that she will be able to read the characters? I am using Mavericks, and MacMail. I input either with Imkqim or the Mac Simplified Pinyin input. I don't see any way to change the code settings!

Many thanks in advance for any help!

Judy Amory (jma...@post.harvard.edu)

[Edward Lipsett /t]

This may help... I asked them to make me one years ago, and they obliged
same-day!
http://www.njstar.com/cms/unicode-to-dbcs-code-conversion

--
--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Chinese Mac
group.
For answers to frequently-asked questions, visit
http://www.yale.edu/chinesemac To start a new topic, send a new message to
chine...@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe, send a message to
chinesemac-...@googlegroups.com
For more options, visit http://groups.google.com/group/chinesemac
---
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
"Chinese Mac" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an
email to chinesemac+...@googlegroups.com.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

[Eric Rasmussen]

Hi Judy!

You have discovered the shakier decisions in Mavericks, the elimination of the Message > Text Encoding setting in Mail. The only workaround I can think of is to temporarily set the OS to Simplified Chinese, and compose the message in the localized Simplified-Chinese Mail. Steps:

[1] Close all applications, or at least Mail.

[2] Open System Preferences > Language & Region and set the primary language to Simplified Chinese.

[3] Open Mail, compose message using Simplified Chinese, send.

[4] Close Mail, and reset the primary language to English.

I tested this with a short message containing some Simplified-only glyphs (e.g., 万), just to be sure to force the message to GB, but I doubt that is really necessary. Anyhow, it worked and the message went out as "GB-2312"...

I don't know if it is necessary to actually compose the message while Mail is localized for Simplified Chinese -- it might be enough to switch to SC when you send -- but I didn't experiment with that.

Eric

[Judy Amory]

Thanks to both Edward and Eric! A few questions:

Edward: how do I use the NJStar utility? Do I type my Chinese characters directly into their box, then copy and paste it to my email? Or do I first compose the email, copy it to that box, then copy it back? And is mixed English and Chinese ok?

Eric: Thanks for the tip that it's a Mavericks problem -- I still have an ancient laptop that's running Lion, and Mail still has the Text Encoding option there. Do I choose GB before starting the message, which will include both English and Chinese, and will that be ok? Or do I have to go in and choose GB every time I switch languages and input Chinese?

And how about composing directly in Gmail? Safari still offers the Text Encoding option, but that I presume is for reading. If I choose GB in Safari, will it then mean that any Chinese characters I input will be in GB? Of course, they look the same. Is there any way to tell?

I think I once knew all this, but I really thought Unicode had solved the problem.

Judy Amory (jma...@post.harvard.edu)

[Edward Lipsett /t]

From: Judy Amory <jma...@post.harvard.edu>
Reply-To: Chinese Mac <chine...@googlegroups.com>
Date: 2014年6月17日火曜日 1:47
To: Chinese Mac <chine...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: [chinese mac] Inputting non-Unicode characters

Edward: how do I use the NJStar utility? Do I type my Chinese characters directly into their box, then copy and paste it to my email? Or do I first compose the email, copy it to that box, then copy it back? And is mixed English and Chinese ok?

Judy: All of the above, but I suspect it would be easier to compose it in your favorite app first. 

[Nobumi Iyanaga]

Hello Eric,

On Jun 17, 2014, at 12:04 AM, Eric Rasmussen <hello....@gmail.com> wrote:

> You have discovered the shakier decisions in Mavericks, the elimination of the Message > Text Encoding setting in Mail. The only workaround I can think of is to temporarily set the OS to Simplified Chinese

Yes...

The problem is the same for Japanese. Someone wrote a Mail.app plug-in program to set the encoding to ISO-2022-JP. See:
<http://sourceforge.jp/projects/letter-fix/wiki/FrontPage>

The developer seems to be responsive. Perhaps you can ask him if it is possible to add other encoding to his plug-in...

Best regard,

Nobumi Iyanaga
Tokyo,
Japan

[Eric Rasmussen]

On Mon, Jun 16, 2014 at 12:47 PM, Judy Amory <jma...@post.harvard.edu> wrote:

Eric: Thanks for the tip that it's a Mavericks problem -- I still have an ancient laptop that's running Lion, and Mail still has the Text Encoding option there. Do I choose GB before starting the message, which will include both English and Chinese, and will that be ok? Or do I have to go in and choose GB every time I switch languages and input Chinese?

And how about composing directly in Gmail? Safari still offers the Text Encoding option, but that I presume is for reading. If I choose GB in Safari, will it then mean that any Chinese characters I input will be in GB? Of course, they look the same. Is there any way to tell?

IIRC, you don't need to set the encoding for the email until you are ready to send. If it's just English and Chinese, then GB will be fine.

I don't think Gmail allows it, as far as I can tell. The only option they give you is to tell Gmail to "avoid" using Unicode (UTF-8) -- but then it automatically sets the encoding for you. You can't tell it what encoding to use…

Eric

[Eric Rasmussen]

On Tue, Jun 17, 2014 at 11:20 AM, Eric Rasmussen <hello....@gmail.com> wrote:

I don't think Gmail allows it, as far as I can tell. The only option they give you is to tell Gmail to "avoid" using Unicode (UTF-8) -- but then it automatically sets the encoding for you. You can't tell it what encoding to use…

I should have added that probably Gmail would correctly assign GB to a message containing English and Simplified Chinese. So going into your Gmail settings [General > Outgoing Message Encoding] and checking the "Avoid Unicode..." option would probably do the trick.

[Judy Amory]

Thanks so much, Eric. I'll use my ancient non-Mavericks laptop for now and save your messages for when it give up the ghost which will probably not be long.

Judy Amory (jma...@post.harvard.edu)