MLEditor User's Guide

5. Reading/Editing Text File(s) in the Windows Explorer  Contents  7. Unicode-Related Conversions


6. Intelligent High-Precision Code Conversions Between Simplified Chinese and Traditional Chinese


6.1 The Intelligent High-Precision Code Conversion Engine of MLEditor
6.2 Clipboard Conversions, Edit Area Conversions, File/Web Page Conversions and Site Conversions
6.3 Conversions Between "Simplified Chinese" and "Traditional Chinese" Within the GBK Table
6.4 Conversions Between Unicode "Simplified Chinese" and Unicode "Traditional Chinese"
6.5 Intelligent Word Adjustment
6.6 How to Perform Perfect Code Conversions by MLEditor

6.7 STGuru
 

6.1 The Intelligent High-Precision Code Conversion Engine of MLEditor


MLEditor is the pioneer in high-precision code conversion between Simplified Chinese (GBK) and Traditional Chinese (Big5). A great feature of this program is it can help assuring professional quality in conversion without post-conversion manual modification.

 

MLEditor provides full series of code conversion services - clipboard conversion, edit area conversion, conversion core as well as site conversion between GBK and Big5 based on its special intelligent high precision code conversion engine. Besides, when you convert text in edit areas, you can also choose to convert between "Simplified Chinese" and "Traditional Chinese" within GBK table.

 

Great efforts were made to increase the precision of code conversion. Most single characters in the GBK table, the GB2312 table and the Big5 table were carefully considered manually, by many specially designed programs, or through some specially designed procedures. Many related standards and vast volume modern text resources were checked again and again to make sure the conversion results are correct and suitable. Besides, we also carefully designed and tuned out a unique word adjustment engine and a series of carefully designed word adjustment libraries, which will help users arrive their ultimate expectation for a code conversion engine - perfection.

 

MLEditor has a unique word adjustment pack management system. It can be used to tune out a word adjustment pack for a specific code conversion project. You can easily keep perfect conversion quality with a well-maintained code conversion pack for your conversion task. More about word adjustment can be found in 6.5 Intelligent Word Adjustment.

 

The code conversion engine of MLEditor was specially optimized. Its speed is fast among its kind. Actual speed of the code conversion depends on the performance of your computer, as well as the number of applied items in the word adjustment libraries.

 

6.2 Clipboard Conversions, Edit Area Conversions, File/Web Page Conversions and Site Conversions


MLEditor provides full series of code conversion services - clipboard conversion, edit area conversion, conversion core as well site conversion.

 

 

Pic UG-6-1 All code conversion commands can be found from under the Code Conversion submenu.

 

 

Pic UG-6-2 Edit area code conversion buttons on the source toolbar. They are used for edit area code conversion (GBK->Big5 and Big5->GBK). Default direction for edit area conversion is from source edit area to destination edit area. You can also set the direction as Source -> Source if you like (see Pic UG 6-4).

 

Clipboard Conversions

Clipboard Conversion converts text in the memory. Clipboard conversion is very fast. If you convert a block of text of no more than 100 KB, the conversion will be finished in a blink. If the text is over 100 KB, it will also be very fast, but MLEditor will start a progress bar to inform you about the conversion progress.

 

 

Pic UG-6-3 A code conversion progress bar will show if you convert text of more than 100 KB in the clipboard or edit area.

 

Edit Area Conversions

Edit Area Conversion is a visual conversion which will convert the text from the source edit area. The default and recommended direction is from source edit area to destination edit area. If you prefer, you can also set it as from source edit area to source edit area itself.

 

Same as clipboard conversion, a progress bar will appear if you convert text of more than 100 KB. Though conversion itself is fast, if you are converting a large block of text, please be patient for MLEditor to set conversion result into the destination edit area after the conversion.

 

Besides conversion between GBK and Big5 text, you can also choose to convert between "Simplified Chinese" and "Traditional Chinese" within GBK table in an edit area conversion. More about it can be found in 6.3 Conversion between "Simplified Chinese" and "Traditional Chinese" within GBK Table.

 

 

Pic UG-6-4 Edit area conversion can convert text in the source edit area. If you set Edit Area Conversion Options as "Source->Source", the conversion result will be written back into source edit area. If you set it as "Source->Destination", the conversion result will be written into the destination edit area.

 

 

Pic UG-6-5 Text display language will be changed automatically to show text in the proper language after edit area conversions. In this example, after a Big5->GBK conversion, the language in the source edit area was changed to Traditional Chinese. The language in the destination edit area was changed to Simplified Chinese.

 

File/Web Page Conversions and Site Conversions

File Conversion and Site Conversion use the same dialog, but if you choose the value for Conversion Object as "A File", the setting will be that for a conversion core; if you choose the value for Conversion Object as "A Site", the setting will change to be used for a site conversion.

 

1. File/Web Page Conversions

When you choose "Conversion Object" as "A File", the setting will be used for a conversion core.

 

If you choose "Result in a new file", the "Destination File" must be different from the "Source File", so the original file can be protected from mindless overwriting. If not, the result will be the same as original file, so the original file will be overwritten at the end of a file conversion. 

 

You can click the file icon at the right end of the path edit box to read the source file or the converted result.

 

If the file you hope to convert is a web page, the language property of this web page will be changed from big5 to gb2312 if the conversion is a Big5->GBK conversion, and it will be changed from gb2312 to big5 if the conversion is a GBK to Big5 conversion.

 

 

Pic UG-6-6 UI of File / Web Page Conversion

 

2. Site Conversions

Site conversion is in fact directory conversion. It's called Site Conversion because the most powerful purpose of this function is to convert from a gb2312 web site to a big5 web site, or from a big5 web site to a gb2312 web site. 

 

When you choose "Conversion Object" to "A Site", the setting will be used for a site conversion.

 

If you choose "Result in a new site", the "Destination Site" must be blank, or not existing at all. This is to protect user from mindlessly overwriting an existing directory. If you choose to convert to a new site, you can copy non-text files to the destination site, this function is useful since non-text files are usually images, zipped files or other resources referred by converted web pages.

 

You can click the directory icon at the right end of a path edit box to see the directory structure of the source or the destination directory if it exists.

 

Similar to a conversion core, the language properties of all web pages converted to the new site will be changed to the target language automatically.

 

 

 

Pic UG-6-7 UI of Site Conversion

 

 

Pic UG-6-8 Site conversion in progress. In this example, a site of about 40MB was converted in within 5 minutes (under Windows 2000) at professional quality. Statistics information was shown in the caption of main UI of MLEditor, so if you are converting a large site, you can do some other work during this time, and still can monitor status of site conversion from statistics information on task bar. You can halt or stop site conversion by clicking the image button as shown in the white circle.

 

6.3 Conversions Between "Simplified Chinese" and "Traditional Chinese" Within the GBK Table


There is a full suite of "Traditional Chinese" within GBK table. MLEditor can help you convert between "Simplified Chinese" and "Traditional Chinese" within the GBK Table. This function is part of edit area conversion.

 

6.4 Conversions Between Unicode "Simplified Chinese" and Unicode "Traditional Chinese"


MLEditor does not provide direct conversions between Unicode "Simplified Chinese" and Unicode "Traditional Chinese". But with the help of
Unicode-related conversions, you can perform such conversions in three steps.

 

Clipboard Conversion: Unicode "Simplified Chinese" to Unicode "Traditional Chinese":

1. Clipboard Conversion: Unicode -> ANSI (Simplified Chinese)

2. Clipboard Conversion: GBK -> Big5

3. Clipboard Conversion: ANSI (Traditional Chinese) -> Unicode

 

Clipboard Conversion: Unicode "Traditional Chinese" to Unicode "Simplified Chinese":

1. Clipboard Conversion: Unicode -> ANSI (Traditional Chinese)

2. Clipboard Conversion: Big5 -> GBK

3. Clipboard Conversion: ANSI (Simplified Chinese) -> Unicode

 

6.5 Intelligent Word Adjustment


MLEditor provides word adjustment mechanism to further increase the precision of a code conversion. 

 

The result of code conversion with word adjustment can be much better than without it. 

1. There are some characters in Simplified Chinese, such as ,which can be mapped into 2 or more characters in Traditional Chinese under different context, in this example is . It's same that some characters in Traditional Chinese can be mapped into 2 or more characters in Simplified Chinese, such as in Traditional Chinese are in Simplified Chinese.

2. Many modern phrases describing the same thing are different in Simplified Chinese and Traditional Chinese. Such as modem in Simplified Chinese is , but in Traditional Chinese, it's .

The above 2 kinds of problems can be solved perfectly with word adjustment mechanism. In addition, you can add any word you hope to change by applying word adjustment mechanism at a suitable time. 

 

 

Pic UG-6-9 The general Word Adjustment UI will be opened when you click "Advanced Word Adjustment" command under the Code Conversion submenu. The top line of list and buttons are used for managing word adjustment packs. A word adjustment pack can be used to manage configurations of all GBK->Big5 libraries and all Big5->GBK libraries for a specific conversion task up to perfect conversion quality. You can save the pack, and edit or reapply it whenever you want. The four buttons at bottom-left just next to the help button are tools you can use to merge libraries, to check/fix repeating items in the library list, and to find a word in a specific library or in the whole library list. There is tip for each item in this UI at the bottom of this dialog box when you move mouse onto the item.

 

 

Pic UG-6-10 Editing a word adjustment library. You can change everything of a word adjustment library here. A library will be applied in word adjustment only when you checked "Apply this library". The word list may not be displayed correctly if the language of your OS is not same as the language of this library, but you can see the two words of any selected item pair correctly in the two edit boxes under "Before Adjustment" and "After Adjustment". If you don't like editing the library word by word in this dialog box, you can click the file icon right to the bottom of the list to open the library in another instance of MLEditor. When you finished editing the library file you will be prompted to update from your modified file. You can check validation or auto-fix any validation related problems by the two tools in the circle at the bottom of the dialog box.

 

There are two kinds of word adjustment libraries - Big5 libraries and GBK libraries. Big5 libraries are used in word adjustment at the end of a code conversion from GBK to Big5; GBK libraries are used in word adjustment at the end of a code conversion from Big5 to GBK.

 

6 system libraries and some custom libraries (IT/Windows/Network professional library) are provided in the installation packs of MLEditor.

You cannot delete a system library, but you can modify the content of it, anyway, you are not advised to do it if you are not an expert. Following are description about these libraries.

 

System Libraries:

Base Lib: it's provided to solve the problems of character difference as described before in this section.

Phrase Difference Adjustment Foundation (PDAF) Lib: it's provided to fix the problem of different phrases.

Phrase Difference Adjustment Foundation 2 (PDAF2) Lib: it's provided to fix the problem of different phrases created or still not solved by PDAF Lib.

Final Fix Lib: sometimes too many word adjustment libraries may cause new problem in the mid, you can fix any problem created in the mid here.

Final Fix Lib2: fix trouble phrases produced, or still haven't been fixed in the original "Final Fix Lib"

Final Fix Lib3: fix trouble phrases produced, or still haven't been fixed in the original "Final Fix Lib 2"

 

Custom Libraries:

IT Lib: fix IT related problems.

IT Lib2: fix IT related terms produced, or still haven't been fixed in the original IT Lib.

Windows: provided to fix terms typical in Microsoft Windows operating systems.

Windows2: fix Windows related terms produced, or still haven't been fixed in the original Windows Lib.

Network: is provided to fix typical network related terms.

Network2: fix network related terms produced, or still haven't been fixed in the original Network Lib.

 

Custom Final Fix Libraries:

Hong Kong Lib: Word adjustment lib for the conversion of Hong Kong style Chinese.

 

One thing the user should know about the adjustment libraries is, all the libraries will be applied in the sequence from top to bottom in these library list. So if you found some problem arises from some library, you can fix it in a library below it.

 

6.6 How to Perform Perfect Code Conversions by MLEditor


MLEditor has everything you need to perform perfect code conversion for any purpose. The only limitation is your imagination. Here is some advice on how to use it.

1. Apply the "Default" pack for your small general-purpose conversions; apply the "IT" pack for small IT-related code conversions. For small and general purpose conversion, apply "IT" pack if it's an IT-related topic; apply "Default" pack if it's a general purpose conversion not closely related to IT. These two packs are usually enough for small general purpose conversions.

2. Create a special word adjustment pack for each of your important code conversion projects. You can edit and save all configurations for your word adjustment libraries in this pack. When you hope to perform the conversion, just apply this pack and begin your conversion.

3. Use packs provided by MLEditor in a suitable way (advanced instructions)

a) Familiarize yourself with libraries provided by MLEditor - 6 system libraries, several custom libraries and several custom final fix libraries (there are 2 series of such libraries for GBK->Big5 and Big5->GBK respectively). Make sure you know what each library is designed for.

b) It is a good idea to apply all the 6 system libraries all the time. They are applied in default setting.

c) Apply IT-related libraries when converting IT-related topics. Do not apply them if your conversion project is not related to IT.

d) There are several custom final fix libraries in the installation pack. You can apply any of them if it is suitable for your topic.

4. Created one or two level custom final fix libraries for either or both Big5->GBK conversion or GBK->Big5 conversion for your own use within your word adjustment pack. They can be used for two purposes:

a) Add your custom fix word pairs within your custom final fix libraries.

b) You can change possible difference in links, or any thing always requires manual work after the code conversion here. So you don't need to modify such links as "...\gb2312\abc.htm" to "...\big5\abc.htm" manually each time after conversion, you can just add a word fix pair "\gb2312\"->"\big5\" in your custom final fix library to fix this problem during code conversion. If you find some term uneasy to be fixed for certain reason, or new problem arises after you applied some lib(s), you can also fix it in your custom final fix lib(s).

 

6.7 STGuru

 

The Simplified Chinese - Traditional Chinese conversion functions of MLEditor have been enough for common purpose for most users. However, if you are facing large amount of professional conversion requirements, you are advised to use our product STGuru, which is specially designed for the purpose of Simplified Chinese - Traditional Chinese conversions. STGuru integrated our best and the most recent conversion data and breaking-edge conversion techniques. Besides, STGuru is also a full-functioning Chinese text editor.

 

Homepages for STGuru is:

 

STGuru: http://www.speedy7.com/cn/stguru/index.html