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3. The CXterm and Hztty

CXterm is a terminal simulator just like xterm but with the ability of displaying and inputting chinese charactors. It supports GB, BIG5 coding. Along with hztty, you can also read HZ encoded text which is commonly used in chinese newsgroup. You may read CXTERM.FAQ (cs.purdue.edu:ftp/pub/ygz) for installation details. Yongguang Zhang is the author of this great software.

3.1 Getting the cxterm package and hztty

cxterm5.0.p3.tar.gz is the latest version of cxterm (version 5.0). This single package includes cxterm and chinese fonts. It is very easy to install the cxterm. You can get cxterm and hztty from

cxterm5.0.p3.tar.gz    ftp.ifcss.org:/pub/software/x-win/cxterm
hztty-2.0.tar.gz       ftp.ifcss.org:/pub/software/unix/convert

3.2 Installing cxterm

Unpacking the cxterm package

# tar -xvzf cxterm5.0.p3.tar.gz
Which will creat a new directory cxterm-5.0
# cd cxterm-5.0
# ./config.sh
If you want to install cxterm for all the users on the system, you need to become root before you run the command ``./config.sh''. Now you can follow the instruction to compile and to install cxterm.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
    --- BASIC MENU ---
  0. Read COPYRIGHT Notice
  1. Compile, Install, and Configure "CXTERM 5.0" in One Step

    --- OPTION MENU ---
  2. Compile cxterm (not to install)
  3. Install cxterm (after successful compilation in 2)
  4. Install additional Chinese font(s) for your X window
  5. Configure your account for using cxterm (after installation in 3)

  x. Exit
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Please choose (0/1/2/3/4/5/x) :

Choose option 1 if you want the installation script to do everything for you. At the middle, you will be prompt to enter the installing directory. In my case, I installed cxterm in /usr/local/chinese. There are also two fonts come with the cxterm package, choose option 1 and 3 will install the fonts automatically. You can also install extra fonts using option 4. After installing cxterm, make sure the executables cxterm and CXterm in your search path. For C shell and Tcsh

# set path (/usr/local/chinese/bin $path)
For sh and bash
# setenv PATH=$PATH:/usr/local/chinese/bin ; export PATH

CXterm is a shell script for loading X window resources and bringing up the cxterm. For using cxterm in GB mode, try this

# CXterm -gb
Or in BIG5 mode
# CXterm -big5

3.3 Installing hztty

Hztty translates Chinese between different encoding. Unpacking hztty-2.0.tar.gz

# tar -xvzf hztty-2.0.tar.gz
# cd hztty-2.0
# make linux
After compiling, move the executable hztty to your bin directory and the man page to your man directory.
# mv hztty /usr/local/bin
# chmod 555 /usr/local/bin/hztty
# cp hztty.1 /usr/local/man/man1
# chmod 444 /usr/local/man/man1/hztty.1
Read the hztty man page for how to use hztty.

3.4 Color patch for cxterm

There are also one patch file cxterm-5.0.p3-color.patch.gz locate in the same directory as cxterm5.0.p3.tar.gz at ftp.ifcss.org:/pub/software/x-win/cxterm. You can patch the cxterm source to get ANSI color for cxterm. Here suppose you have the cxterm source tree in /tmp/cxterm-5.0

# cp cxterm-5.0.p3-color.patch.gz /tmp
# gzip -d cxterm-5.0.p3-color.patch.gz
# patch < cxterm-5.0.p3-color.patch
# cd cxterm-5.0
# ./config.sh
The color-cxterm is kind of cool. But There is one annoying thing when I try to input Chinese in color-cxterm: the input area at the low bottom of cxterm does not redraw properly, I have to press ``Ctrl-L'' to redraw the whole screen. This maybe just a termcap problem. Hope someone will give me a hint.

3.5 Trouble shooting

Sometimes Cut \& Paste may not working in cxterm shell prompt. Tcsh strips the 8th bit. You need to type ``setenv LANG'' to correct this. Also try ``stty pass8''.


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