Russell McMahon wrote:
>>> Have you ever tried to send messages from a PC which thinks that 
>>> you
>>> want to converse in Chinese and is utterly dedicated to ensuring 
>>> that
>>> you do so ? :-). When sending emails from Taiwan I have been forced 
>>> on
>>> occasion to use Alt-nnn combinations to obtain "English" text or 
>>> even
>>> to cutting and pasting letters from other messages. I'm certain 
>>> that
>>> there would have been easy ways to convince said PCs that I wanted 
>>> to
>>> actually produce the characters shown on the keyboards that I was
>>> using, but I could not at the time find anyone who could both
>>> understand my question and answer it.
>>>       
>
>   
>> If its running windows and you see a blue square with a language 
>> code in
>> the system tray try clicking on it. You may well find an english 
>> option
>> in the list that pops up.
>>     
>
> In the above paragraph the normal meanings of "forced", "utterly 
> dedicated", "could not at the time" and "Chinese" apply :-). Resorting 
> to Alt-nnn for plain text entry is often a reliable sign that one has 
> come to the end of one's other resources.
>
> I'm reasonably Windows-user competent.
> I only used the methods that I did because they were the best that I 
> found that I could do in the circumstances..
> I assume that the (presumably) Chinese IT person who set the system up 
> was substantially more Windows competent than I and didn't want me to 
> do things my way :-).
> Not having a Chinese-Windows CD on my person, nor even an English one, 
> and not being willing to utilise either had I had one, being a long 
> long way from home in someone else's country and hotel, I found my 
> options to be more than usually restricted.
>
> I know that in fact there WAS a simple way to do what I wanted but I 
> couldn't establish how to enable it (despite very very extensive 
> attempts to do so) and I couldn't find anyone present who knew AND who 
> could understand me AND who would show me how.
>
>   
>> And if the blue square isn't there, of if "EN" doesn't pop it, it 
>> often
>> takes under a minute to put it there.
>>     
>
> For some values of often :-).
>
> In the guest PC room of a Taichung City hotel Murphy seemed to only 
> speak Chinese.
>
>
>
>         Russell
>
>   
good idea to carry an ubuntu live CD around with you then (or stick it 
on a USB stick) ;->
MUWHAHAHA!

my understanding was a large % of china used their own flavour of linux 
for their computing needs.
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