Were you wondering what this meant ? Well, I was. It turned out to be
plain Chinese, and was originally intended to look like this:
The above sentence actually means:
"Well, I don't know what this means but I have it straight from
a Taiwanese server"
Of course, there are a lot of languages on the
internet that use each their respective character sets. It just tackled
me that there where these "nonsense" characters on my web. I wanted to
see them as the author intended them to look. So, here
is what you need to have Chinese in your MS-Windows browser (and in
your Explorer, and in your Winhelp, and even in your "Start" menue, if
you happen to use German Windows). In addition to Chinese it supports Japanese
and Korean encodings.
If you install this you may even telnet in Chinese, for instance at
the National Central Library of Taiwan.
The two most prominent encodings for Chinese are Big5, wich
is a defacto standard in commercial Hong Kong and Taiwan,
and "GB" which is the standard with the two computers in the Peoples
Republic of China. Normally you are set right with "Big5 Fan Ti"
Important update: The two most widely spread web browsers, Netscape
Communicator 4.0+ and MS Internet Explorer 4.0+ now fully support international
languages. The only thing you need are the appropriate fonts...
You can get fonts for Japanese, Chinese (Big5), Chinese (GB), Korean
and Pan-European at:
Yes, Netscape users need them too... simply install the appropriate fonts, go to "Edit / Preferences / Appearance / Fonts", choose the language and select the appropriate font:
If you have Office97 there should be a directory "fareast" somewhere on the CD, there are some even better fonts you can use, eg. "MS Mincho" for Japanese.
Some pages will use the appropriate font automatically, for some you
must select the language in "View / Encoding"
Let's have a look at the writing at the top of
the page,.
The first symbol means "China". That's quite obvious. No, really. The Chinese
traditionally regard their country as the center of the world, and the
rectangle cut in the middle means "middle" or "center". The second symbol
means "writing" or "literature". It consists of a cross, the most simple
"mark" of writing, and something you can feel free to interpret as the
lid of an inkpot. Together they mean "Chinese writing".
Wait for your number to
be called.
© Dirk Djuga 1996