Windows Hotmail Question

Several of my friends and I are trying to figure out the following issue.

In Hotmail, when you send to an email address with Chinese character information in the name, how does that come out when a person (who has a pure English language system) receives it?

In other words, suppose I am using a Taiwanese friend’s computer in Taipei, and he has Chinese system. He asks me to help him draft an email to his business contact in the USA. Her name is Alice. However, in his address book, he is using Chinese characters for this entry. Here is the way it looks in Hotmail –
艾麗絲 (agrollins@elkinkomaster.com)

I would assume that on an English language system, the Chinese characters will come out as gibberish. But some of my Taiwanese friends think not, they think maybe it comes out as a little graphic. ([color=#4000BF]Note: On hotmail, it is not possible to edit that name information when you are sending the email[/color].)

In order to edit the name information, you have to discard the email, go to the Hotmail address book, and make the changes there, which is somewhat complicated and time consuming. (Gmail is better for this, because you can edit the name information at the point of sending the email.)

Has anyone had any experience with this and can provide some insight? How do the Chinese characters display on a pure English system?

In some cases they will see the Chinese characters (which may still be gibberish to them because they can’t read Chinese). Other times it may be a ? for each character or a square box. It depends what email system they are using and what operating system they are using on the receiving end.

These days, with Unicode in every sensible program and web page, isn’t it more likely just to depend on the fonts they have? I believe that Windows (since XP at least) comes with Arial Unicode, so Windows users should be able to see Chinese characters OK. Mac folks should be alright too. Don’t know about other OS’s.

You’re right that most modern systems and browsers should be able to detect it automatically. It is also possible to add this ability to your system if it doesn’t have it already through playing with various settings and display fonts - but for those that don’t have the right settings, they would probably see question marks or little boxes.

it mainly depends on the browser, not the system. I belive IE 7 or 8 supports multi-language browsing by default. for lower edition i’m not sure, and i would say it needs some more job. at least when i was in TURKEY last May i see all Chinese characters became gibberish like [] when i browse back Taiwanese homepages. and I remember it was IE 6 with XP.

i remember when the browser detected there was a language other than the Turkish system the first time, it prompted me about it. when i tried to install multi-language pack on that public computer, it forbade me. apparently it was locked with this function. so i will say it mainly depends on the browser.

[quote=“golf”]it mainly depends on the browser, not the system. I belive IE 7 or 8 supports multi-language browsing by default. for lower edition I’m not sure, and I would say it needs some more job. at least when I was in TURKEY last May i see all Chinese characters became gibberish like [] when i browse back Taiwanese homepages. and I remember it was IE 6 with XP.

i remember when the browser detected there was a language other than the Turkish system the first time, it prompted me about it. when i tried to install multi-language pack on that public computer, it forbade me. apparently it was locked with this function. so i will say it mainly depends on the browser.[/quote]
Sorry if I’m being dense, but if you have a page in UTF-8 or UTF-16, and you have a font that covers the relevant code point, any browser from the last few years (including IE6) should be fine?

I would have thought that the problem you saw was from pages that still use Big5. But all webmail sites now should be using Unicode. As should desktop email clients.

[quote=“Joesox”]
Sorry if I’m being dense, but if you have a page in UTF-8 or UTF-16, and you have a font that covers the relevant code point, any browser from the last few years (including IE6) should be fine?

I would have thought that the problem you saw was from pages that still use Big5. But all webmail sites now should be using Unicode. As should desktop email clients.[/quote]
well no… I was browsing Hotmail.com just last May! Or maybe it’s IE5? anyway i would say today it’s very thin chance to be not able to see Chinese characters correctly, specially his business contact is in the US!

When my Taiwanese friends send me emails in Canada, I get Chinese characters. The only time I didn’t was when I was using a computer in a public library, which I guess was a bit old - in that case I just saw a little box where each character should have been.

I can see most Chinese websites just fine, unless they try to do something non-standard. Hotmail, Gmail and Yahoo will display Chinese just fine, and you can send emails containing Chinese if you have a Chinese IME set up.

If you’re using XP you’ll probably need to install East Asian language support from the regional settings in the Control Panel. English Windows 7 will show Chinese websites out of the box.

English office will also display Chinese text with no problem if your OS supports it (see above)

If you do have problems with websites, try fiddling with the Character Encoding menu, they probably did something non-standard like using Big5. Unicode is the preferred standard now.