Chinese Character Vocabulary Of Stamp Collecting Terms.

Thanks Glenn,so that is why Tom can not read out them at first.

Thanks Tom,I only understand a little Chinese stamps and covers,but through our communication we will learn more in USA and China area.

Actually, some English users might be surprised to learn that the Chinese fonts are ALREADY on your computer. This will depend on what version of MS Windows you are using and also your computer brand, but most computers purchased in the past 5 years already have most of the basic "foreign" character/font sets on your hard drive. It's only a matter of activating the font set. If you want to actually INPUT Chinese characters, then you will need your original system CD or online access to install the special input software.

I was seeing the same gibberish characters that most of you all were seeing instead of the Chinese. That's because I have my browser character set default set at "Western". You can set your browser to use alternate font sets for display.

For example, I am using Firefox 3.5.3 as my browser. If I got to "View", then select "Character Encoding", and then choose "Chinese Simplified (GB2312)", then the window redraws and the Chinese characters come out properly (being able to read them properly, is a different issue ).

IE and other browsers have the same options, but I don't remember the steps since I don't use those browsers anymore. If you do not see the Chinese Simplified character set, you may have to go to the appropriate System Control Panel and click in on (then you may have to reboot). AOL is the only browser I've seen that consistently has problems displaying Chinese characters, but affects mostly emails on older systems, not webpages.

As I mentioned, most of the computers of the past 5 years that I have seen, already have the Chinese Simplified and Traditional Fonts installed, but not necessarily activated; also, many people don't have those fonts set as alternate character sets in the browser. So if you don't see the Chinese characters, it should only be a 1 step (at most 2 step) process to see them properly. If you still don't see the Chinese Simplified character set anywhere in your system, then yes, you may have to install it from CD or online. But as far as I've seen, that is the exception, not the rule.

So play around with your browser language settings, you may be surprised!

k

Thanks Khj for the tips.

Khj,
It's the same for IE8: view/ encoding/ Chinese simplified (GB2312).

Dan

Thanks, Dan.

I forget things pretty fast. The only things I still remember about IE are the constant hangs and overall slowness, and that incessant banging sound!

That was the sound of...