SINOCODE 

- SINOCODE is a very simple and not very sofisticated programm for
  DOS. It is written in PASCAL. Whoever wants to use it, is free
  to use it and distribute it to whoever is interested in it.
- It should not become part of any commercial distribution without
  prior discussion with the author. 
- SINOCODE allwos conversion between the tree most important codes for CJK
  scripts: GB-2312, BIG-5 and JIS (and IBM555).
- In most cases there is no one-to-one conversion -- especially when
  the conversion starts from a simplified character code as GB-2312.
  So conversion from GB-2312 to BIG-5 allways implies some editing of
  the new version.
- The JIS-characters are EUC-encoded, i.e. both code-bytes have set the
  highest bit (as in GB-2312).
- The BIG-5 conversion table contains also the Hiragana and Katakana
  which in the ET-version of the BIG-5 code, and which seem not to be
  part of the original BIG-5-code. 
- If a character is not available in the target-code, the missing character
  is replaced by default by two stars (**). These characters might be
  changed in SETUP (maybe you prefer two blanks instead).
- The codetables might not yet be satisfactory. If you find wrong or
  missing conversions, please notify me in order to update the tables.
- The author of the programm assumes no responsability whatsoever for
  the functionality of the programm. 
- List of available conversions: 

                1 = GB-2312   -->  BIG-5  
                2 = GB-2312   -->  IBM-555
                3 = GB-2312   -->  JIS (EUC)
                4 = BIG-5     -->  GB-2312
                5 = BIG-5     -->  IBM-555
                6 = BIG-5     -->  JIS (EUC)
                7 = JIS (EUC) -->  GB-2312
                8 = JIS (EUC) -->  BIG-5  
                9 = IBM-555   -->  BIG-5  
               10 = IBM-555   -->  GB-2312

INSTALLLATION AND USE

  Use PKUNZIP to decompress the files into a directory of your choice
  on the harddisc. The ZIP-files need not to bee copied to the harddisc.
  When UNZIPing give as the last parameter the disk to which you want 
  to copy the files. Example: on hardisk C: you create a subdirectory:
                   
                         c:\ <RETURN>
                    C:   md sinocode <RETURN>

  Suppose you have the ZIP-files on a disk on B: then you say:

                    C:   a:pkunzip -x a:*.zip c:\sinocode

  Now you are ready to use SINOCODE. To work properly you should
  change into the directory of SINOCODE. The files you want to convert
  might be in another disk (e.g. D: or F: etc.), but there is no space
  to have lenghty paths together with the filenames. 

  First you chose the conversion type by a number. SINOCODE will
  read the necessary table an then prompt you for an input file.
  Since SINOCODE does not automatically give a new name to the 
  outputfile, you should give also the name of the output file which
  must be different from the name of the input file. (Probably you
  will change the extension.) 

  With SINOCODE you find three textfiles (TESTGUO.GUO, TESTBIG.BIG
  and TESTJIS.JIS). They list the characters in each of the three codes
  concerned. If you have a Japanese wordprocessor as JWP for WINDOWS
  by Stephen Chung, you might have a look at the file TESTJIS.JIS. You
  will see a table for the JIS-code. You then might convert this file
  with SINOCODE to BIG-5 (choose as target file name: TESTJIS.BIG). 
  Start the ET-system and look at TESTJIS.BIG: you will see the same
  codetable but just missing the Japanese characters not contained in
  BIG-5. Such tables will help to locate errors in the coding tables.

FINALLY

  Hope you enjoy the programm, and hopefully it will not destroy 
  your data. 
 
  I am interested to hear from you for ciriticism and suggestions.

 Urs Widmer                           tel.: (0049)421-218-3188
 PC-Labor, MZH                        FAX:  (0049)421-218-2720
 University of Bremen                 email: a06g@alf.zfn.uni-bremen.de
 D-2800 Bremen 33