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On-demand Multi-l<strong>in</strong>gual Font Service on Heterogeneous Computer<br />

Platforms<br />

Background<br />

W<strong>in</strong>g Kay Kan (wkkan@cs.cuhk.edu.hk)<br />

Stephen S M Wong (smwong@cs.cuhk.edu.hk)<br />

V<strong>in</strong>cent S Y Yiu (syyiu@cs.cuhk.edu.hk)<br />

Gilbert H F Young (young@cs.cuhk.edu.hk)<br />

High Performance Comput<strong>in</strong>g Lab<br />

Department of Computer Science & Eng<strong>in</strong>eer<strong>in</strong>g<br />

The Ch<strong>in</strong>ese University of Hong Kong<br />

Hong Kong<br />

Hak Wai Chan (hwchan@cs.hku.hk)<br />

Henry W H Cheung (whcheung@cs.hku.hk)<br />

Department of Computer Science<br />

The Hong Kong University<br />

Hong Kong<br />

Abstract: The plug-<strong>in</strong> modules described <strong>in</strong> this paper supports World Wide Web (WWW)<br />

brows<strong>in</strong>g <strong>in</strong> multiple languages, such as Ch<strong>in</strong>ese, Japanese, and Korean language. This<br />

project aimed at creat<strong>in</strong>g software tools for WWW brows<strong>in</strong>g that does not limited by the<br />

availability of local fonts <strong>in</strong>stalled on client computers. As most computers sold to end users<br />

nowadays are come with English font set only, very few are equipped with other fonts <strong>in</strong> local<br />

languages. The problem to display non-English languages through WWW service will be<br />

discussed. A novel solution to solve the font problem will be proposed. With the product <strong>in</strong><br />

this project, WWW browsers can display multi-l<strong>in</strong>gual documents <strong>in</strong>dependent of the<br />

character and font sets on heterogeneous computer platforms.<br />

The Internet has been a new paradise for <strong>in</strong><strong>format</strong>ion exchange. In the cyberspace there is no nationality<br />

barrier. There are more than 100 countries connected to the Internet and tens of millions users are us<strong>in</strong>g it.<br />

People from different countries are free to distribute and receive <strong>in</strong><strong>format</strong>ion through different channels such<br />

as newsgroups, gopher, archie and emails on the Internet. Among these channels, WWW supports graphical<br />

user <strong>in</strong>terface, it is easy to learn and easy to use. It also supports multimedia contents.<br />

The existence of WWW and the Internet supports communication and <strong>in</strong><strong>format</strong>ion exchange break<strong>in</strong>g the<br />

geographical limitation among people <strong>in</strong> the world. However, <strong>in</strong>convenience has been observed <strong>in</strong> non-<br />

English speak<strong>in</strong>g places when local characters are required <strong>in</strong> WWW <strong>in</strong><strong>format</strong>ion pages. To display a (foreign)<br />

language, the character and font set for that language had to be <strong>in</strong>stalled on a local font server or on the local<br />

mach<strong>in</strong>e. English is the most popular language <strong>in</strong> computer <strong>in</strong>dustry such that every computer is expected to<br />

be able to display. However, it is not the case for other languages. For example, it is unreasonable to expect<br />

the majority of computers designed for Greek speak<strong>in</strong>g area to have Korean font/character set be <strong>in</strong>stalled.<br />

There are a few methods to solve the multi-l<strong>in</strong>gual display problem. One popular solution is to store and<br />

transmit graphical images <strong>in</strong>stead of characters. Every page <strong>in</strong> a WWW server is stored <strong>in</strong> a graphical <strong>format</strong>,<br />

such as JPEG or GIF <strong>format</strong>. The (foreign) characters become dots and pixels on the graph. However, this<br />

method degrades the speed of WWW browsers by many times, because it takes many bytes to represent the<br />

same character <strong>in</strong> pixel form.<br />

Another method to solve the multi-l<strong>in</strong>gual display problem is to <strong>in</strong>stall fonts on client computers. It is one of<br />

the most popular methods <strong>in</strong> use for WWW documents with local characters. There are quite a few problems

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