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1. Introduction
The Asia-Pacific Parliamentary Forum (APPF) is now undertaking a plan to
promote information exchange among legislatures. The APPF general assembly,
held in Korea, in January 1998, adopted a resolution concerning
this plan, which was named the "Asia-Pacific Open Information Network (APOINT
2001)". During the executive committee meeting in Peru, September 1998, the
APPF technical working group met and discussed the issue.
Japan, as part of the APOINT 2001 project, has made efforts to develop
a multilingual network environment, and here we present a testing version
of the application.
1.1 Background and Objectives
Today, parliaments of the Asia-Pacific nations run a homepage, where they
distribute information concerning their activities. The ability to refer
to the information, technology standards and software and other forms of
shared resources is presupposed. Above all things, alphabets and characters
cause a big problem. Computer systems are adapted (localized) according
to the local language, and to reproduce different character sets other
than their own on an ordinary personal computer is not an easy task.
The multilingual software we introduce here enables localized computers,
according to the local language environment, to display the Japanese language.
This tool is accompanied by:
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a free font resource which contains the Japan Industrial Standards characters,
and
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a set of tools which add multilingual capability to the localized web browser.
This software has been developed under the initiative of the Japanese secretariat
of the APPF, and it can be downloaded at the APPF Japan web site free of
charge.
1.2 Software Development
This software package was designed by the Asia-Pacific Free Font Study
Group (AP Font SG) under the contract of the Japanese secretariat of the
APPF. The AP Font SG is hosted by the Center for Global Communications
(GLOCOM) of the International University of Japan. As a research institution
of the social sciences, GLOCOM has, since its foundation in 1991, regarded it
as part of its duty to internationally provide information on Japanese society,
a task which eventually took advantage of the Internet. As we continued our
activities, we came to face a number of requests concerning multilingual
processing of electronic document on the network from domestic and international
users. In particular, international users are in need of the fonts and tools
necessary to read information in Japanese.
In order to address this problem, GLOCOM organized a joint-research
collaboration project, called the 'Open Electronic Document Committee',
in which linguists, network engineers, experts in standardization, and editors
are involved.
1.3 Members of the Asia-Pacific Free Font Study Group
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Chair
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Yushi Komachi, Ph.D (Matsushita Graphic Communication Systems, Inc.)
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Members
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Shuji Matsushita (Professor, Institute for the Study of Languages and Cultures
of Asia and Africa, Tokyo University of Foreign Studies)
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Junichi Hamada (Directer, Institute of Socio-Information and Communication
Studies, University of Tokyo)
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Gen Nagamura (Operating Officer, Seoul Systems Co., Ltd.)
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Akinori Okubo (Manager, Research and Development Center, Ricoh C