Content

Contents For DingDang Help

About The Program

Getting Started

Commands

File Menu Commands

Edit Menu Commands

Input Menu Commands

View Menu Commands

How To...

Format And Print Documents

Uninstall The Program

Shareware And Author Information


About The Program

DingDang for Windows is a Chinese word processor designed to run under MS Windows version 3.1 or above (including OS/2 and Windows 95).  It is a Windows MDI (multiple document interface) application so that you can open several documents at the same time. File size is unlimited. It uses standard GB coded ASCII text format.  It can write Chinese, Japanese, and Russian as well as English. It can exchange text with other programs with cut and paste. If the other program does not understand GB code to display Chinese characters, you may copy Chinese characters as a bitmap graphic image which can be pasted into other application like MS Paintbrush.

It supports several input methods.  Quan Pin is the easiest to use but slow. Pin Yin input is similar but require you to input tones in additional to Pin Yin letters. Cang Jie is faster when you do a lot of Chinese text editing.  Qu Wei input is handy when you need to find the GB code of a character.  If you can not find a character from the current character font file, you can use DingDang Fontedit to make one.

The program prints through the standard Windows printer driver so it can print on any printer that Windows supports. It can print English in bold, italic, underline etc. and print Chinese in 5 different fonts. It can scale characters to any size. Text formatting is supported by inserting control code into the document. Printer preview mode let you see the effect before you print it.

If you have multimedia system installed on your computer, you can listen the selected text or the whole document in standard mandarin Chinese through your speakers. You can continue to editing your text while the program reads in background.

Last 4 recently used files, screen maximizing state and last used display font will be automatically saved to the profile.

The primary ordinance of the program is for persons who can speak English and want to learn or  write in Chinese. The program is written using Microsoft Fundation Class library. The Windows 95 version will be available shortly.


Getting Started

To help you to get a quick start without going into detailed setup, copy all files into one subdirectory on your hard disk, say C:\DWRITE. Now start your Windows and open a program group. From the Program Manager menu, choose File/New/Program Item/OK, then type the following information:

Description:	DingDang Write

Command Line:	C:\DWRITE\DWRITE.EXE

Working Directory:	C:\DWRITE

If you are using Windows 95, you need to select settings/taskbar, then add the program as a short cut to one of your group. If you have any problem, make sure:

All font files including "SONG16.FON" and "FAN16.FON" should be in the current directory when the program starts. All "DWRITE.*" files must be in the same directory where the program resides. These includes "DWRITE.PY", "DWRITE.QP", "DWRITE.CJ", "DWRITE.LX", "DWRITE.GB" and "DWRITE.WAV".

The help file has a simple structure. You can view the whole file with the browse buttons. Click on ">>" to move forward, and "<<" to move backward.

The program will create the program's profile "DWRITE.INI" in your Windows directory. If you want to use other font files or font files not in the program directory, you may modify the [Font] sections in this file. For example:

song16=c:\font\cclib.16

Note that DingDang Write can auto-detect number of missing sections in the font file and use it correctly. The default simplified font file is in entry "song16" and the default complex font file is in entry "fan16" under [Font] section.


File Menu

File Menu Commands

All of the menu items are standard. The most recently used 4 files are listed so that you can open them again easily.

You can use the printer preview mode even you don't have a printer as long as you have a printer driver installed.

You will be asked to save your file before quitting if you have made any changes to the file.

Speaking mode will be cancelled if you close any file when program is still reading.

If you do not have a printer, you can print to a file, then copy the file to floppy. Copy the file to printer port (lpt1 or com1) on a computer connected to a printer.


Edit Menu

Edit Menu Commands

Cut and paste functions are standard. You must use the mouse to select text. When you copy or cut the selected text to clipboard, the text is saved as standard GB text file. It can be pasted to another Chinese word processor which can display GB coded text. If you want to paste the Chinese text to other applications, say Paintbrush, which do not understand Chinese but can display bitmap, you can copy it as bitmap image. The smallest rectangle containing the selected text is saved as an bitmap image when you select Copy Bitmap option.

Find and Find Next is to search English text only. Go Next will locate the next Chinese character which is the same as the character under the cursor. Currently you can not search a sentence of Chinese character string.

You can click the mouse to move the cursor around. You can press Home key to move to the beginning of line, End key to the end of the line, ^PageUp to the beginning of the document and ^PageDown to the end of the document. Arrow keys, PageUp and PageDown keys move the cursor as expected. Backspace will also delete selected text if selected.


Input Menu

Input Menu Commands

The program will start in English mode. Next to the 'E' on the tools bar, you will see a locker like bitmap button. Click it to switch Pure Chinese mode on and off. In Pure Chinese mode, all keys will be translated to a GB coded character corresponding to it. In additional, space will be translated to GB coded space character, '.' will be translated to Ju4 Hao4 (a small circle), and '`' will be translated to Dun4 Hao4.

There are 4 methods to input Chinese. In any method, an input dialog box will be displayed under the mainframe. You can press ESC key to switch on and off the dialog input window. This is convenient when you need to type a punctuation when you are in dialog window. Return key will clear the editor dialog box buffer.

In Pin Yin mode, you will need to type the full Pin Yin of the character including the 4 tones. All available Chinese characters corresponding to the Pin Yin will be displayed. Note that the second pin yin in the Chinese character Nü3 (female) uses a non-standard letter. Use letter 'v' for 'ü' (a double dots on top of u). So you type nv3 for the Chinese character Nü3. If you can't find a pin yin, maybe because it is listed under a different pin yin since many characters have multiple pronouciations.

In Quan Pin mode, you type the Pin Yin only without the tones. There may be more characters to select. You can press '>' key for additional selection. Since the program will start search as you type, you can type the number to select the character before you finish typing the full Pin Yin. Letter 'ü' in pin yin is simply substituted by 'u' in this mode.

Cang Jie mode is based on the structure of the character rather than the phonetics. For complete description, please read the document "CANGJIE.GB" to get started. This is a very fast input method, but will need you to learn some basic rules and some practice before you can comfortably use it.

Qu Wei method is not exactly an input method. It is best for look up of the GB code. It is also handy to input punctuation, Japanese and Russian GB coded characters.

For each of these method, after you choose the character, the program will search the Lian Xiang file. If a match is find, the Lian Xiang characters will be displayed so that you can continue to input until no Lian Xiang characters found. Typing any letter will automatically start a new input string. To add a word to your lian xiang file, place the cursor after the word, and then press F10 key. The word you added will be put as the first lian xiang word. Each character can have maximum of 10 lian xiang characters.

For your convenience, all files used by the program use standard file format. The Pin Yin file is "DWRITE.PY", the Quan Pin file is "DWRITE.QP", the Cang Jie file is "DWRITE.CJ" and the Lian Xiang file is "DWRITE.LX". All the files can be edited by the program. This makes the input method somehow user changeable.  Also if you want to know how the program find the pin yin of a character, you can look the source in "DWRITE.PY" file. All the files have simple structure. You need to keep the same structure if you like to change them for your need.

The Reveal feature will let you see the input codes of all methods of the character under cursor. This is handy when you are reading an article and find strange character that you can't pronounce. It is also useful when you don't know how to input the character in one of the method, but you can input the character in another method.


View Menu

View Menu Commands

You can use either the simplified characters (used mainly inside mainland China) or the complex characters. Complex characters are also called traditional characters. You can change back and forth easily by click on the Simplified menu item. A check will indicate the font you have chosen and will be saved to the program's profile.

If you have multimedia system installed, you can listen the program read the document in Chinese. You can skip a paragraph, or to stop the reading at any time. Or you can continue to work while the program read in background. If you are learning Chinese, you can select some text, and let the program read the selected text only.

The pin yin index file is "DWRITE.GB". You can edit this file, but do not add or delete any lines in the file. The sound is in file "DWRITE.WAV". Both of the files are available only in standard version. The sound file is about 4 MB - too big to be included in shareware version. If you only have the shareware version but like to see the effect of this feature, you can do the following:

First copy file "DWRITE.PY" to file "DWRITE.GB". These two files are similar except some of the multiple sound words (Duo1 Yin1 Zi4) are edited in "DWRITE.GB". The program will find the first character in "DWRITE.GB" for the given character. Next you need to create a big wave file about 3.8 MB. You can do this by using MS Sound Recorder which comes with your Windows program and name it "DWRITE.WAV" and put it in the same directory as the program. Make some noise when you recording (turn on your radio). When you click "Say It" (a man like bitmap), the program will use the file to read the document. Of course the sound will not be mandarin Chinese unless you know how to make the "DWRITE.WAV" file.


Format Document

Format And Print Documents

You can change the following default page format settings in profile DWRITE.INI under section [Print]:

InitFont=song24

left margin = 100

right margin = 100

top margin = 100

bottom margin = 100

baseline skip = 54

character skip = 0

paragraph skip = 0

character width = 32

character height = 36

"InitFont" identify the initial font to use for printing. DingDang uses a unit of 1/10 of a millimeter, so "left margin = 100" sets the left margin to 10 millimeters.

Additional format statements can be inserted into document.  All format statements must be included in a pair of '~' characters. For example, to change character size to 36x24, insert ~OZ36 24~ in your document. The following is the list of format statements:

Syntax	Description (# = a number in tenths of a millimeter)

ML#	Set left margin

MR#	Set right margin

MT#	Set top margin

MB#	Set bottom margin

OL#	Distance between two lines

OC#	Space added to character

OP#	Space added to end of paragraph

OZ# #	Chinese character width, height

OX#	Skip right (positive number) or left (negative number)

OY#	Skip down (positive number) or up (negative number)

OM# #	Move to absolute position on paper

N	New page

Ffontname	Change font to fontname, example: ~FKAI24~ change font to 24x24 KAI

E# # # # # #	Change English font (see below)

The fonts logical name like "fan16" or "kai24" must be listed under [Font] in the profile and the real font file path (on the right side of the equal sign) must exist. The formattings can be grouped like ~FSONG24 OZ48 48 OL60~. Double '~' characters will be printed as a single '~' character.

The 6 numbers needed for English fonts are height, width, weight (0-900), italic (0-1), underline (0-1) and pitch. These correspond to parameters of the CreateFont Windows API call. Height and width are in 1/10 millimeter unit. You can set width=0 to let Windows choose it. For weight: 400=normal, 700=bold, 0=default. For italic and underline: 0=off, 1=on. Pitch is really pitch and family. It must be two digits. The first digit: 0=default, 1=Times Roman, 2=Swiss, 3=Modern, 4=Script. For the second digit: 0=default, 1=fixed pitch, 2=variable. For example, pitch=21 is a variable width (proportional) Swiss Font family. Not all combinations of font family and size are available. Windows will simply use the best match for the font you choose.

OZ command will automatically imply an E command. For example, ~OZ 36 30~ will automatically add a ~E 36 0 0 0 0 0~ format command.


Uninstall The Program

DingDang only create one file in your Windows directory. It doesn't modify any of your existing files. To uninstall the program, you can delete the file DWRITE.INI in your Windows directory and all files from the program directory.


Shareware

Shareware Version

You should use the shareware version for testing purpose only.  The shareware version of the DingDang Chinese word processor has the following restrictions:

1.	You will see this help screen instead of the main window when you start the program.

2.	Only essential files are included.

Now you may double click the upper left box to close the help window or choose to read other topics in help file. If you have questions or suggestions, you can write to:

Yijun Ding

12640 Southridge Drive

Little Rock, AR 72212

USA

phone: (501) 228-5608

Internet e-mail can be sent to: xxye@curie.ualr.edu

registration fee: $50

Please register your copy by sending $50 (shipping included) to the above address.  Personal check or money order (cashable in US bank) accepted.  You will get the following (files marked with a * are not included in the shareware version):

*DWRITE.EXE	Standard version without shareware notice.

*FONTEDIT.EXE	Create or edit characters.

 DWRITE.HLP	On line help documentation.

 DWRITE.PY	User changeable Pin Yin code database.

 DWRITE.QP	User changeable Quan Pin code database.

 DWRITE.CJ	User changeable Cang Jie code database.

 DWRITE.LX	User definable Lian Xiang dictionary.

*DWRITE.GB	Pin Yin used to speak mandarin Chinese.

*DWRITE.WAV	Sound wave file (3875244 bytes).

 DWRITE.INI	My sample program profile.

 SONG16.FON	Song Ti 16x16 bitmap fonts.

 FAN16.FON	Fan Ti (traditional) 16x16 bitmap fonts.

*SONG24.FON	Song Ti 24x24 fonts.

*KAI24.FON	Fai Ti 24x24 fonts.

*HEI24.FON	Hei Ti 24x24 fonts.

*FANG24.FON	Fang Song Ti 24x24 fonts.

*FAN24.FON	Fan Ti (traditional) 24x24 fonts.

 READ.ME	Brief introduction.

 PRINTTST.GB	Printer test file.

 CANGJIE.GB	Cang Jie input documentation.

*YE.GB	Chinese poem (test all 24x24 printer fonts) with a printed copy.

*CMxxxx.GB	One issue of the Hua Xia Wen Zai magazine.