Chinese Windows XP

[channamasala]

"You can buy MUI CDs in China"

OP says she wants traditional Chinese though...maybe in Hong Kong (or Taiwan instead of China) but elsewhere he/she is likely to get Simplified.

I live in Taiwan and have been trying to get Chinese input/reading on the computer I share with my boyfriend for months. Granted the computer's a piece of crap, but still.

Is there a way to get Traditional Chinese writing (input for Word, websites, email) on a computer with Windows XP? I have the XP Pro CD somewhere but no Chinese seems to be available on it.

[ipsi()]

It should be pretty easy to install Chinese Input on Windows XP. Check this bit I wrote on the Wiki for instructions: http://www.chinese-forums.com/index.php?/topic/14636-input-methods-for-typing-characters-and-pinyin. Hopefully that should help. If it doesn't, then where abouts do those instructions fail? Also, check here if you're having issues writing Traditional Characters once the IME is set up.

[imron]

"You can buy MUI CDs in China"

OP says she wants traditional Chinese though...

The MUI CD comes with multiple languages. There are several CDs in the set, and the CD with Simplified Chinese also contains Traditional Chinese, French, German, Japanese and Korean.

[channamasala]

I see! I guess I am confusing it with something else then. Guanghua Market in Taipei offers up just the Traditional CD, not in a pack of them. It's quite cheap but didn't work on my computer, though I blame the computer for that (it's crap and the CD drive is one step away from broken).

There used to be directions on this site to make input methods work that did not require a CD (I used them to successfully configure it on my old laptop, since passed on) but I can't find them anymore.

[imron]

For just displaying the characters, go to start->control panel->regional and language options and check the box to install the east-asian language files (you'll need an XP CD for this).

To run traditional character programs, use the AppLocale utility.

To write in Traditional, your best bet is to download something like google's pinyin IME and set it to output traditional.

[tonypace]

Anyone who's considering going the MUI route should keep a couple of things in mind:

The MUI pack is not a perfect drop in replacement for actual native language XP - to be particular software that expects the file system and default encoding to be in the local character encoding set - say Big5 - will fail in just the same annoying ways that it would on English windows. You girlfriend may not be exactly impressed when your manly computing skills are completely stymied. (Note: perhaps my skills simply weren't good enough - AppLocale sounds nice)

Also, the MUI is a pretty heavy load on your system, and to switch you will need to have separate user accounts.