This is a flat file I maintain of Chinese tea terms I call the Rosetta Stone. It first started out as tea names in English and Pinyin then retrofitted with Chinese characters. The first time you save a file with Chinese characters using Linux,Windows,Mac10 youll get a prompt saying contains Unicode characters and you have to change the encoding to UTF8 which is compatible with all three OSes. I use the search function in the editor or browser to find entries. I simply use copy from most likely a web page and paste in the editor.
Here is a Browser view using FireFox on Linux:
Notice the funny entry for 'Assam euckr'. Those are two byte character values which arent Unicode. When I do a copy/paste and dont get what I expect I look at the encoding of the web page and make a note. Here euckr is a Korean encoding so I change the browser or editor to use that to show the character properly. The same for Lincang. I need to use a Chinese simplified encoding most likely GB2312 but is a legacy note since I show the characters gathered later.
Here is a Edit view using Kwrite on Linux:
Notice the ---- break. Entries before this string are recently added. Entries after that are the catch all in the sense they dont fit on a single line like paragraphs. ? is a note to myself it might be wrong. In this case the factory names before Skip4Tea and after I pruned from them. I have a boat of Sun Yi Shun I got from Chinatown. Here are their traditional characters elsewhere I show the simplified.
I now have over three thousand line items. Some are redundant and I try to prune as I go. I usually add two or three times a week.
Last November I got an Asus 900 netbook from Target for $300 which produced these screen dumps and this Usenet post using Google Groups. I recently got an even more powerful Asus 901 from BestBuy for $200. You save money by using Linux and not Windows XP on some of the models. Youll feel perfectly at home using the Linux graphical interface. Even when you get beneath the skin youll feel comfortable using the Terminal if you use Windows Console. After that things are different. Best yet Asus Linux comes with everything you need for Asian languages. There is full blown spreadsheet and document software if you need that.
You will get cheated on available user disk space thats because they use a disk drive with no moveable parts. Its the latest technology. In the 900 and 901 you have 1gig. No big deal you can buy SDHC cards with 4gb for $5 at BigLots and use the builtin device read/write interface at USB2 speeds comparable to a 5200 rpm spinning disk drive. Or simply set up a Share on a Windows computer and use the disk space you dedicate to that. I had a spare 200gb on a Vista I wasnt using. You can buy an Asus model with XP Windows and a much bigger disk drive with floating heads if you like. Youll be in the $400 range.
Chinese on the cheap.
Jim