Reading Kanji with English Netscape & Eudora Under Windows 95J
compiled by the editors
Q: I'm running Japanese Windows 95 on my computer. Can I use the English version of the Netscape Navigator browser to view Japanese Web pages, or do I have to get a Japanese version? And what about Eudora Pro: can the English version read mail written in Japanese?
A: Yes, you can use the English version of Netscape Navigator 2.x or Navigator Gold 2.0 beta to view Japanese-language Web pages under Win95J. To be able to read kanji-based Web pages, just go to the Netscape Options/Document Encoding menu, and select "Japanese (Auto-detect)" as your encoding method.
If you view a lot of Japanese Web pages, you might even want to make Japanese your default encoding by clicking the Save Options menu selection. The Japanese fonts may not be especially attractive when viewing English Web pages, but the alternative is to select Japanese encoding each time you access a kanji Web page, and switch back to Western (Latin1) encoding when you access an English Web page.
You can also read and write Japanese in Netscape mail, English version. If the default Japanese fonts are not to your liking, just click on Options, then General Preferences, then Fonts, and highlight Japanese in the "For the encoding" box.
Here is where you will notice one of the minor nuisances of using English Netscape Navigator under Japanese Windows 95: the Japanese font names show up as garbage characters in the Fonts window. (See figure 1.) When you click "Choose font," the Japanese font names and samples are readable so that you can make your selection (Win95J handles this task). But the double-byte characters of the Japanese font name will not display correctly in the Fonts window (single-byte English Netscape (mis)handles this task). Just click on the Choose Font box if you forget which Japanese font you've chosen; your selected font shows up highlighted in the "font name" box.
You'll notice, too, in figure 1 that the three rightmost buttons at the bottom of the window are also displayed as garbage characters. For this the only solution is to memorize their function. (The second from the left is Cancel, and the rightmost is Help.)
The same thing goes for Eudora Pro: you can read and write messages in Japanese with the English version under Japanese Windows 95. Again, it is just a question of selecting the appropriate font.
In English Eudora Pro, click on Tools and then Options, and click the down arrow on the Category box until you reach the Fonts and Display selection. Click on Fonts and Display, then click the Screen font button, and select your favorite Japanese font. If you intend to print Japanese, do the same for the Printer font.
As with Netscape, although you can select the font normally, the Japanese font name will appear as garbage characters in the Font and Display Options window.
Now that you're all set to browse the Web, check out "An Introduction to Japanese Internet Search Engines." And send a kanji message to editors@cj.twics.com to let us know that you've been successful.