Hey August!
<Esc>:read !trans -b -no-ansi -t japanese "Strong like bull, smart like tractor."
雄牛のように強く、トラクターのように賢い。
The japanese one did not render.
Maybe so but at least your editor didn't grunge them like most 8-bit fido editors do. I can't render them either given that there is no terminal based fonts for Japanese ... or Chinese for that matter. With terminal fonts there is a 512 character limit as things stand today. Far more than is needed for most languages. To render Japanese a gui app with the right fonts will be needed. I am not sure if there are any terminals in xorg that can handle CJK fonts but maybe. I am guessing that Firefox might be a viable alternative.
I have a status line for vim running in a linux terminal that shows me the unicode when I place the cursor under the character in question. For example it shows the first charater as U+96C4 which seems reasonable. I could look them up at
http://www.unicode.org/charts/ which does render the actual character in a pdf which is viewable on the linux terminal. Given that I am left to ponder the possibility of a graphical interface for fidonet if and when this ever becomes a real issue.
Life is good,
Maurice
-o -o o- o-
(\ (\ /) /)
^^ ^^ ^^ ^^
... Heald hordlocan, hyge fæste bind mid modsefan.
Hold close the treasure-chest, bind your thoughts fast within the heart. --- GNU bash, version 5.2.32(1)-release (x86_64-pc-linux-gnu)
* Origin: Little Mikey's Brain - Ladysmith BC, Canada (1:153/7001)