--- Forwarded Message from Kimi Furuta <[log in to unmask]> ---

>Date: Mon, 22 Mar 1999 10:49:35 -0800
>From: Kimi Furuta <[log in to unmask]>
>Subject: Re: #4914.1 Free web-mail sites for Chinese and Korean
>To: Language Learning and Technology International Information Forum <[log in to unmask]>

------------------
Christian,

Thank you for your information.

I am aware that I can send/receive message in Asian
characters using Hotmail.com.  In fact, My students are
using Hotmail.com for Japanese e-mail for last several
months.  We are using the combination of IE 4.0
+Multilingual Support+Global IME for Japanese web browsing
and e-mailing.

However, I noticed that problems when using Hotmail.com in this
environment.

First of all,  I found that, if you set the fonts in the view menu in
IE 4.0 to Japanese Auto-Select, then the recipient of the message
gets a series of strange numbers (it looks like &#12371;&#12428;
&#12399;&#26085;...).  I have instructed students to make sure they
set the code to either EUC or Shift-JIS.  However, lots of students
forget it, and I keep on getting this kind of unreadable messages.

Also, when I tested to send messages from Hotmail.com to a different
web-mail account, using various code settings of the view menu,
I could not read none of the messages regardless of the types of
Japanese codes that I used.

One of the Japanese sites that I know has a function to set the
language code of the message manually when composing it
and, therefore, you don't need to worry about the fond setting
in the view menu of the browser.

From this experience, I thought that similar thing may happen when
you use Chinese or Korean in the Hotmail account.  Maybe this
is the problem only when you use Hotmail.com with the combination
of software that we are using (i.e., IE 4.0+multilingual support+
Global IME).

Have any of your students reported such problems?

********************************************************************
Kimi Furuta
Modern Languages Department
Malaspina University-College
900 Fifth Street, Nanaimo, BC, Canada  V9R 5S5
TEL:(250)753-3245 Local 2788  FAX:(250)741-2667
E-Mail: [log in to unmask] (English & Japanese)
URL: http://www.mala.bc.ca/~furutak/jp-home.htm
********************************************************************
I can read your Japanese messages.
********************************************************************

C. Ratcliff  <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
------------------
>Ms. Furuta:
>We've been struggling with the same problem at the Univ. of
>Washington's Language Learning Center, and have found that
>Hotmail.com has updated itself, and now supports just about
>any language you could care to use.
>You need font support and input kits, but that's all.  (I have only
>actually tested hotmail on Macs thusfar, but I see no reason why this
>shouldn't be the same for PC's -- knock on wood!)
>
>Yours,
>Christian Ratcliff
>Staff Assistant for Asian Languages
>Language Learning Center
>University of Washington, Seattle