Utilities

Chinese Tools

Character Palette

Chinese Text Converter

Converts plain-text documents between Chinese encodings. Includes a built-in text editor that allows you to edit the documents to be converted, and create new documents.

In OS X 10.4 and above, this tool has been transformed into the "ChineseTextConverterService" located in the /System/Library/Services folder. It functions in the Services menu for Cocoa applications and it is also built into the Chinese input methods.

System Tools

File Name Encoding Repair

OS 8 and OS 9 use Apple's WorldScript encodings to enter and display file names. OS X uses Unicode to enter and display file names. OS 9 converts file names to Unicode for use on OS X, but when the encoding differs from the system default in OS 9 (for example, a Chinese file name on an English system) the conversion to Unicode can be incorrect. This utility corrects many common cases of incorrect conversion. For OS X only. See: http://www.apple.com/support/downloads/filenameencodingrepairutility.html

UnicodeChecker

UnicodeChecker allows you to browse the Unicode character set on your machine. For any character, it will tell you the decimal Unicode number, hexadecimal Unicode scalar value, hexadecimal UTF-8, UTF-16 and UTF-32 code, Unicode name, and more. You can also install Unihan.txt for direct access to the information from the Unihan database.

Free, for OS X 10.3 and above. See: http://www.earthlingsoft.net/UnicodeChecker/

TinkerTool System

TinkerTool System gives you access to advanced system settings and internal maintenance features built into Mac OS X. It allows you to change the language used for system startup and login. This does not affect the language used in the Finder (which you can change in System Preferences... International). See: http://www.bresink.com/osx/TinkerToolSys.html

Quick Change

Quick Change changes file Type and Creator codes. For Chinese Mac users, this can be necessary when moving a font from Windows to the Mac OS, if the system does not recognize the file as a font. In this case, all you need to do is change the font's Type code to "sfnt" and the Creator code to "movr". See: http://www.everydaysoftware.net/quickchange/

ID3Mod

Converts garbled ID3 tags for MP3 music files in iTunes. For OS X 10.3 and above. See: http://www.sinomac.com/ID3Mod/

Document Tools

Preview

Comes with OS X. Handles Chinese text well. However, Preview jumbles the font MingLiU/PMingLiU (the traditional-Chinese system font in Windows XP and earlier) when it is embedded in PDF documents. The result looks something like this:

Preview bug

There is a simple workaround: Adobe Reader (and Acrobat) handles this font with no problems.

Adobe Reader

Free. Handles Chinese text well, including searches. If the author of a PDF file embeds Chinese fonts in the document, Reader will be able to display and print the document on any system. If the author uses Chinese fonts but does not embed them in the document, then you will need to take two steps in order to view and print the file:

  1. Use the Custom Installation option during installation of Reader. This allows you to install Chinese, Japanese, and Korean fonts inside the Reader package.
  2. To print the file, select the Download Asian Fonts option in the Advanced Print Setup dialog box (requires a PostScript Level 2 or higher printer).

See: http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readermain.html

Adobe Acrobat

Handles Chinese text well, including searches. See: http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/main.html

VINC

VINC (View, Navigate & Convert) is an integrated disk navigation, document viewing and conversion application allowing users to view and convert MSWord, PDF, AppleWorks, and RTF documents. Supports Chinese, Japanese, and Korean, as well as Central European, Cyrillic, Arabic, and Hebrew. Version 1.7 provides the capability of viewing PDF files and converting them into other word processing file formats. See: http://www.recosoft.com/products/vinc/

icWord & icExcel

icWord can read Unicode and other Chinese-language text Microsoft Word documents (Mac or Windows, including localized Asian editions). It allows you to view on screen and print Word docs with the original formatting preserved. Also converts files to AppleWorks. icExcel performs similar tasks for Microsoft Excel documents. See: http://www.icword.com/ and http://www.icexcel.com/