Re: Japanese fonts

[Olaf Meeuwissen <olaf@epkowa.co.jp>]

I took the liberty of cross-posting my answer to debian-i18n because
there are plenty folks that know a lot more than me.  That said:

roland.kaufmann@space.at writes:

> Hello Olaf,
> I saw your message concerning Japanese fonts on debian-i18n, could
> you share some of your knowledge?  I am interested in fonts useful
> for Japanese under Debian GNU/Linux--I had a look at some fonts, but
> quite a few of them were unreadable.  I would appreciate any
> pointers/hints for fonts, Emacs settings, etc.

Install task-japanese and language-env (or user-ja) to begin with.
Run `set-language-env ja` (or whatever the equivalent is in user-ja)
and you should be on your way, mostly.

I'm rather picky about what gets stuck in my configuration files and
merely used whatever language-env put there as a jumping board for my
own setup.  I only want to be able to use Japanese conveniently in an
otherwise English environment.  No Japanese manpages and menus for me,
please!  ;-)

BTW, language-env may still put some stuff in your config files that
has absolutely nothing to do with setting up a (natural) language
environment (e.g. global-font-lock-mode, c-set-style stuff in .emacs,
PATH settings in .bashrc)

Since you specifically asked for emacs settings, I have this left in
my .Xresources after `set-language-env ja`

  Emacs.Fontset-0: -*-fixed-medium-r-normal--12-*-*-*-*-*-fontset-12
  Emacs.Fontset-1: -*-fixed-medium-r-normal--14-*-*-*-*-*-fontset-14
  Emacs.Fontset-2: -*-fixed-medium-r-normal--16-*-*-*-*-*-fontset-16
  Emacs.Fontset-3: -*-fixed-medium-r-normal--24-*-*-*-*-*-fontset-24
  Emacs.Font: fontset-14

with the following Japanese fonts installed:

  asiya24-vfont (1-9), watanabe-vfont (1-8), xfonts-a12k12 (1-4),
  xfonts-intl-japanese (1.2-2), xfonts-intl-japanese-big (1.2-2),
  xfonts-marumoji (0.2-5) and xfonts-shinonome (1-2)

This is about all I use in my .emacs file (with emacs20-dl (20.7-5)).
I have emacs-dl-wnn (0.4.2-4) and freewnn-jserver (1.1.0+1.1.1-a017-6)
installed besides the unused canna counterparts.

  ;;; Wnn input method setup for Japanese (stolen from language-env)
  ;;;
  (if (boundp 'MULE)				;; mule2
      (progn
        (set-wnn-host-name "localhost")
        (global-set-key    "\C-o" 'toggle-egg-mode)
        )
    (if (featurep 'xemacs)			;; xemacs20, xemacs21
        (progn
          (require 'egg-leim)
          (select-input-method "japanese-egg-wnn")
          (set-wnn-host-name   "localhost")
          (global-set-key      "\C-o" 'toggle-egg-mode)
          (toggle-input-method nil)
          )
      (if (fboundp 'dynamic-call)			;; emacs20-dl
          (progn
            (require 'egg-leim)
            (set-input-method  "japanese-egg-wnn")
            (set-wnn-host-name "localhost")
            (global-set-key    "\C-o" 'toggle-egg-mode)
            (toggle-input-method nil)
            )
        (message "Wnn cannot be used in Emacs20.")
        )
      )
    )

Then I use gnus (5.8.8-2) for all my mail/news needs without any
customizations specific to Japanese.

-- 
Olaf Meeuwissen       Epson Kowa Corporation, Research and Development

     Free Software: `No walls, no windows!  No fences, no gates!'