Reading the Annotated Chinese Scriptures

Viewing the Scriptures

These web pages can only be viewed on Microsoft Internet Explorer 5 or above; Netscape Navigator will not work.   You can download the latest version of Explorer, Internet Explorer 5.5, for free from Microsoft.  

You need a Chinese font to view the pages correctly.   The recommended font is the Bitstream Cyberbit font (be warned, it's 6 Megabytes large).   Unzip the file and install it from the Font section of the Control Panel under Settings in Windows. Another possible font is the free Microsoft Chinese font (get the Global IME for Simplified Chinese with the language pack).   After downloading the program, run it to install the MS Song Chinese font.   It will also automatically set Internet Explorer to use the font. Arial Unicode MS, which also comes with Microsoft Office 2000, is another font that can be used.

Printing the Scriptures

Some printers have difficulty printing Chinese. In these cases the characters (or possibly the pinyin tone marks) will appear fine on the screen but will print out as empty boxes. These web pages do not use Big5 or GB, but instead use the UTF-8 encoding of Unicode.

Below is a list of suggestions on what to try to get the pages to print correctly:

  1. If you printer supports it, check "Print True Type fonts as graphics". This would be available in the "Properties" button in the Printer dialogue.
  2. Update your printer driver to the latest available from the website of the printer manufacturer. Look for a driver that says it supports printing Unicode.
  3. Make sure you have some Chinese fonts installed:
    Cyberbit download
  4. On Internet Explorer, from the main menu go to: "Tools"->"Internet Options". Select the "General" tab and then the "Fonts" button. You'll get a list of languages. Look at Japanese. Does it have any fonts listed? If not, get the Cyberbit font mentioned above, install it, and check again. Also check that Chinese (both Simp. and Traditional) has some fonts listed. IE can interpret the characters as Japanese and not print them unless Japanese has a font listed, even if it displays on screen correctly. This was a problem I had.
  5. If the the characters are printing out, but the pinyin above some characters is lower than others, follow the procedure in the suggestion above, making sure that Japanese, Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese all are using the same font.
  6. Make sure you are running Internet Explorer 5.
  7. If running Windows NT, make sure to get the latest service pack (at least SP5).
  8. If the printer is on a network, try installing the Chinese font onto the printer server.
If none of the above works, or if you have some comments about these web pages, e-mail me at lds@chinesetools.com.