viewing CJK characters on pocket pc

[zig2101]

is there any easy (and free) way to display Chinese, Korean, and Japanese characters on pocket pc?
if you just install the right fonts can you view characters in outlook for pocket pc?

if you have to download a seperate program, any recommendations? what I need is to be able to read/input Korean and Chinese in outlook.

 

[daniu]

viewing should be free: just install a font ...

But I do not know if Outlook for PPC can show the characters everywhere. I can check tonight ...

Writing is not free.

 

[daniu]

Hi!

Just tried sending a Mail that includes chinese characters to my Mobile 5 PPC ...

Sorry - only "kou3" even I have a chinese Font installed.

Outlook for PC also does not support chinese in the Subject - so now MS has kicked chinese out at all.

There must be some trick though ... and it cannot be: "use chinese Mobile 5"

 

[mikelove]

To get it working properly in (nearly) all programs, you need to use a feature called "font linking" - it's enabled by a registry hack. Details of what to change are available on MSDN.

I believe this would work for simultaneous C/J/K if you used a font that covered all 3. SimSun and MingLi both do Japanese (I think), but to get Korean too you'd need to use Arial Unicode or something similar.

 

[zig2101]

wow those fonts are huge! so if your pocket pc doesn't enough internal memory i guess you're outta luck?

 

[mikelove]

Well, it is possible to load fonts from a storage card (we do it in PlecoDict) but you'd need a separate program to do it - something that would run on startup and call the appropriate function to add the font to the list of available system fonts. You might turn up something with a Google search, though.

 

[Anonymous]

I just bought an axim pocket pc.

I want to get it so that it will display chinese characters, how do I install chinese fonts for it?

Will just purchasing pleco provide me the fonts to use in on my whole pocket pc? (e.g. internet browser, email, etc.)?

I"m a total newbie so any information would help tremendously. I don't even know where to begin to look for what I need.

 

[mikelove]

PlecoDict's fonts can theoretically be used anywhere, but our software really isn't designed to support Chinese in other programs, so if you want to view or manipulate Chinese text elsewhere on your Pocket PC it would probably be best to purchase a separate program specifically for that. The two most popular Chinese enabler programs are CE-Star and Monster Chinese - each of them has their strong and weak points, so you might want to try both of their demo versions to see which one you like better. (I get the impression Monster Chinese is a little more stable, but they both issue very frequent updates so CE-Star could easily have improved by now)

 

[Anonymous]

Thank you mike! I will check them out!

 

[ssaito]

Chinese input methods for PPC

Are CE Star or Monster Chinese the only ways to get a chinese character input method in PPC?

Thanks,
Steve

 

[mikelove]

There are a few other programs that aren't marketed as heavily - HWPen, for example, though their website appears to be down at the moment. There's another one I just heard about called Effy - haven't tried it yet but it might be another possibility.

 

[sfrrr]

I tried Effy. Couldn't get it to work. There are also a few other smallish input programs I've tried--as far as I know, I've tested every Chinese mobile on Handango and PocketGear, plus some, such as Pocket Knife (I think that's it's name) and a few oithers on a few Chinese websites. Few of these were free and none of them worked reliably for me.

So far, Monster and CE Star are the only two that run consistently on my several different PPCs. And, I'm back to CE Star because Monster got flaky after a period of use. CE Star has rotten product support (or worse than rotten even), but it's price is competitive and it has all the features I've ever needed for reading and writing online. For example, it reads the output from almost every app I've tested with it.

HTH,

Sandra

 

[hairyleprechaun]

Hello everyone,

I am using an HP iPAQ hx2495 Pocket PC running WM5. I've tried installing Monster Chinese but have never been able to get it to work on my Pocket PC.

So I began using CE Star which worked great until recently. Now, however, I cannot use it because it causes all of the buttons on my PDA, except for the power button, to stop working.

And, as Sandra mentioned above, the customer service for CE Star is terrible. They have not replied to any of the emails I have sent them in the past few weeks.

Unfortunately, I am stuck without a program to write Chinese, and I still need to write Chinese on my PDA everyday.

Soft Resets, hard resets, clean resets and flashing the ROM have not solved the problem for me.

Does anyone here have some suggestions for me, or have had a similar problem with CE Star that you have mangaged to solve? Or does anyone have any other suggestions for Chinese handwriting recognizers besides the HWPen, and Effy mentioned above?

Thanks for the help eveyone!

Darrol

 

[hairyleprechaun]

This is just a quick update for anyone following this thread.

After repeatedly sending Mobem Technologies (CE Star) http://www.mobem.com/ emails regarding the problem I was having with using CE Star and the included Pen Power utility to read and write Chinese characters on my PDA, they finally replied to me today with an email containing a fix so that I can once again use CE Star on my HP iPAQ hx 2495.

I am finally back to being able to read and write Chinese in my contacts, notes, and documents :O)


Darrol

 

[sfrrr]

omigod. They replied????

What was the fix? (So that others may learn without waiting for three months for a possible answer from Mobem?

Sandra

 

[hairyleprechaun]

Hello Sandra,

Yeah, they finally replied after I sent them a pretty nasty, demanding letter. I hated to resort to that, but after sending them 3 courteous letters and waiting for weeks in between without any response I finally decided to try my luck. And . . . it worked . . .

I do not know if the file they sent me will work on all units, or if it is specifically for my HP iPAQ hx2495. So, I am a little hesitant to post it here, as I would not want people to blame me for damage they do to their PDAs. What do you think Mike?

But, I can now use the Pen Power included with CE Star again to read and write Chinese in all applications on my PDA. And, all of the buttons (navigation, contacts, calendar, email, itask and recording) work while CE Star is installed.

The only problem I have noticed is that every once in awhile it causes PlecoDict not to open. This seems to happen when I turn on my PDA after I had been using it with PlecoDict, and closed PlecoDict by tapping on the "X" in the top right hand corner of the screen, and then I turned off the PDA.

This only happens sometimes, and the only remedy I have found for the problem is to do a soft reset of my PDA, and then I can open PlecoDict without any problems.

Any ideas on this Mike? Am I just looking at a software conflict?

Darrol

 

[mikelove]

I'm guessing it's specific either just to the hx2495 or to the 2495 and similar models. So it would probably be best to tell people to e-mail Mobem.

PlecoDict not opening does sound like a software conflict, but if you start quitting PlecoDict with the "Quit" command in the "Dict" menu instead, that might get it to open more reliably. There could also be some sort of intermittent issue with your SD card that's preventing PlecoDict from successfully loading all of its data files - have you experienced problems with any other programs besides our software and CE Star?

 

[hairyleprechaun]

Hello Mike,

Thanks for the quick response. Like always your customer service is fast and reliable.

if you start quitting PlecoDict with the "Quit" command in the "Dict" menu instead, that might get it to open more reliably

I've tried this, but I am still having the issue.

There could also be some sort of intermittent issue with your SD card that's preventing PlecoDict from successfully loading all of its data files - have you experienced problems with any other programs besides our software and CE Star?

I have PlecoDict loaded onto a Sandisk Ultra II Compact Flash (CF) card. Additionally, the problem only occurs after installing CE Star and the included Pen Power.

An interesting side note is that several HP iPAQs have been experiencing battery draining problems lately. According to the forums on HP's website it appears that there are two causes for this. One is a bug in WM5 ActiveSync which causes ActiveSyn to repeatedly try to autosync the device (there is a work around for this, by setting up a fake server and then setting ActiveSync to sync manually). And, the other instance seems to occur when an SD card is installed in the units (regardless of whether or not the CF card is being used). There are ROM and firmware updates to solve this issue, but they don't seem to have solved my battery draining problem. However, with my SD card out my battery works normally and does not experience draining.

 

[mikelove]

I have PlecoDict loaded onto a Sandisk Ultra II Compact Flash (CF) card. Additionally, the problem only occurs after installing CE Star and the included Pen Power.

Hmm... are PlecoDict's Chinese font files still installed? Try uninstalling them (quit PlecoDict, Start\Settings\Remove Programs and remove anything with "Pleco" and "Font" in its name) - it could be that the plethora of Chinese fonts is confusing Windows (or CE Star) somehow.

And, the other instance seems to occur when an SD card is installed in the units (regardless of whether or not the CF card is being used). There are ROM and firmware updates to solve this issue, but they don't seem to have solved my battery draining problem. However, with my SD card out my battery works normally and does not experience draining.

I've said it before and I'll say it again - Windows CE's SD / CF card support is TERRIBLE, it's extremely buggy, has been that way for years and doesn't show any sign of being improved anytime soon. If I were Microsoft I'd throw out every single line of Windows CE's expansion card drivers and rewrite them from scratch (and while I was at it I'd do the same for the font rendering system, which is similarly terrible).

 

[hairyleprechaun]

Hello Mike,

Thank you for the suggestions. I will go ahead and remove the PlecoDict Chinese fonts, and see if that solves the problem.

So, are you saying that with the PlecoDict SimSun font removed that PlecoDict will still run fine, because it will automatically recognize the fonts insalled by CE Star and load them into memory?