Why is there a Chinese text converter in Tiger???

[Mikebike125]

I was wondering why there is a Chinese text converter in Tiger. I mean, how often is anyone going to need that? It is odd to me that it is even there.

What is the explanation for this??

 

[TheAnswer]

Well, there's more that 1.3 billion people that speak Chinese in the world and the written language has two forms: Traditional and Simplified. Since the converter would be a useful resource for 1.3 billion potential Mac users, that's why it's there.

 

[Lord Blackadder]

You laugh now, but soon we'll all be speaking Chinese...

 

[Mikebike125]

I never thought of that. I jut thought if they were going to all that trouble they would have one for Spanish, French, and Italian also.

 

[Objectivist-C]

.

 

[CanadaRAM]

I never thought of that. I jut thought if they were going to all that trouble they would have one for Spanish, French, and Italian also.

Do you mean, supporting the characters in Spanish, French and Italian which are different from English? Maybe by giving access to them through Option key combinations, or even giving the choice of changing the keyboard layout to the native layout of those languages?
Good idea, never thought of that.

 

[TheAnswer]

I never thought of that. I jut thought if they were going to all that trouble they would have one for Spanish, French, and Italian also.

Those languages all use the same alphabet. What the ChineseTextConverter does is simply convert from Traditional to Simplified Chinese characters. It's not as complex as something like translation, because AFAIK the characters have a one-to-one correlation (in fact, some times the character stays the same between the two sets).

FYI, the Simplified character set is mainly used in the PRC, while the Traditional set is commonplace in Hong Kong and Taiwan.

There's extensive support for all kinds of languages and alphabets in OS X, this converter just makes it easier for people to convert one type of Chinese writing to another.

 

[grover46]

Those languages all use the same alphabet. What the ChineseTextConverter does is simply convert from Traditional to Simplified Chinese characters. It's not as complex as something like translation, because AFAIK the characters have a one-to-one correlation (in fact, some times the character stays the same between the two sets).

FYI, the Simplified character set is mainly used in the PRC, while the Traditional set is commonplace in Hong Kong and Taiwan.

Actually, the Chinese Text converter does more than translate Traditional to Simplified, it also allows the user to type Chinese Characters with a standard "qwerty" keyboard by using pinyin.

 

[RedTomato]

(Nice thread resurrection btw)

Yes but why is this in the Services menu by default for EVERYONE? (And it's in Leopard too)

Services has the potential to be very useful, but it's ruined by almost every program just dumping their crap in there. Including you, Apple.

I swear most people explore a bit, see the Services menu drop down, see the run-together indigestible lump of 'ChineseTextConvertor' (nicely done, Apple, not.) and promptly ignore that menu.

There's a free download ServiceScrubber which looks useful.

http://www.manytricks.com/servicescrubber/

 

[John.B]

(Nice thread resurrection btw)

Yes but why is this in the Services menu by default for EVERYONE? (And it's in Leopard too)

Services has the potential to be very useful, but it's ruined by almost every program just dumping their crap in there. Including you, Apple.

I swear most people explore a bit, see the Services menu drop down, see the run-together indigestible lump of 'ChineseTextConvertor' (nicely done, Apple, not.) and promptly ignore that menu.

There's a free download ServiceScrubber which looks useful.

http://www.manytricks.com/servicescrubber/

Reviving an old thread as I just did an Erase and Install of Leopard (N.B. 10.5, not SL/10.6) and had to think for a second or two about how I previously got rid of this on other systems.

You'd think ServiceScrubber would be helpful, but it has no power against system services.

Open Finder and navigate to your boot drive (Macintosh HD if you haven't changed it), in /System/Library/Services/ find ChineseTextConverterService.app and send it to the Trash (and enter the administrator account password). Restart/reboot and it will be permanently banished from your Services menu. If you are happy with the result, take out the Trash.

Thankfully, this has been addressed in Snow Leopard, but for those of still stuck with Leopard (for whatever reason) that don't need to convert from Traditional Chinese to Simplified Chinese, this is how to clean up your Services menu.