HONG KONG (10-04-95) - Sun Microsystems last week began a joint technology project with the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) and Beijing's Qing Hua University to create traditional and simplified Chinese versions of Sun's HotJava browser software.
The Chinese release will be the first non-English version of Sun's browser package.
The project is to be carried out at the High Performance Computing Laboratory in the Department of Computer Science of CUHK and will start this month. Sun will contribute the hardware and transferring technology to the project, while CUHK and Qing Hua University will assign researchers to develop the system.
The collaboration will allow Chinese-language users to interact on the Internet in real time using Chinese characters. HotJava is a user-friendly application based on Sun's Java technology which enables the creation of miniature applications that can perk up Home pages with animation, music and graphics effects.
Such applications are routinely localized into European and Japanese languages first, however the Chinese-language version of HotJava will be the first non-English version to be developed, said Paul Tham, marketing director for Sun Microsystems in the PRC and Hong Kong.
Tham said the company sees China as such a vast opportunity that it was important to move onto the Mainland ahead of other markets. "The Chinese community wanted HotJava in another language besides English," added Dr. Chi Chi-hung, director of the High Performance Computer Laboratory of CUHK.
One of the issues faced by the development team in Hong Kong is to change the algorithm that will convert characters from simplified to traditional forms, Chi said. It is easy to switch characters from traditional to simplified, but converting the other way is difficult because strokes which are eliminated in simplified characters need to be added to traditional characters, Chi said.
HotJava is still in beta testing, with the final release scheduled for December. The development team in Hong Kong will localize HotJava during the next few weeks with the Chinese beta versions to be given to customers by the end of October or early November, Tham said. He noted that when the final release of HotJava is launched at the end of the year, Sun hopes to have it available in both English and Chinese.
[Copyright 1995 Computerworld Hong Kong, International Data Group Inc. All rights reserved.]