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+\hsize=5in\vsize=7in\hoffset=1in\voffset=1in
+\parskip=2pt plus 4pt minus 1pt
+\font\logo=logo10
+\input pmC
+\def\pmC{{\tt pmC}}
+\def\mf{{\logo METAFONT}}
+\font\bigfont=cmr17
+\font\russ=wncyr10
+
+\centerline{{\bigfont Poor Man's Chinese in \TeX}}
+\vskip.15in
+\centerline{Thomas Ridgeway}
+\centerline{Humanities and Arts Computing Center}
+\centerline{University of Washington}
+\vskip.1in
+
+This little document is intended as an illustration of and preliminary
+guide to {\it poor man's 
+Chinese} [\pmC].  \pmC\ is a temporary expedient for
+printing texts with Chinese via \TeX\ until such time as we have a
+well-thought-out system (and fonts) for handling Chinese. 
+
+\pmC\ has a small number of virtues; among these are:
+
+\item{$\bullet$}\pmC\ is available now.
+
+\item{$\bullet$}\pmC\ is available free of charge.
+
+\item{$\bullet$}\pmC\ is available now.
+
+\item{$\bullet$}\pmC\ is device-independent (although it must be admitted that you
+will get relatively more pleasing results on less sophisticated printers.  The fonts
+are based on dot-matrix, right?)
+
+\item{$\bullet$}\pmC\ is available now.
+
+\item{$\bullet$}\pmC\ is sufficiently simple-minded you will not need to be a rocket
+scientist to make modifications for your own use.
+
+\item{$\bullet$}\pmC\ is available now.
+
+\item{$\bullet$}\pmC\ uses fonts mechanically faked-up from dot matrix quality fonts; if you
+want you can incorporate new characters of your own design using a bitmap
+font editor which {\it may} be easier to use than \mf.
+
+For those who might be previously unacquainted with \TeX, let us put forth a few of
+the advantages of \TeX\ which are inherited by \pmC: it can run on almost any
+modern computer; it can print to any of a large number of printers/typesetters;
+it can print (if desired and suitably instructed) elaborate formatting of the text;
+it is available at very low cost, or free (which is an instance of very low cost).
+
+The disadvantages are at least equally compelling:
+
+\item{$\bullet$}\pmC\ is crude and unlikely to ever be greatly improved as regards the quality of its Chinese.
+
+\item{$\bullet$}\pmC\ uses emulation-in-\mf\ techniques to produce a dot-matrix
+font on your output device.  No matter how talented your printer may be,
+the Chinese output by \pmC\ will looked like it was stripped in from
+a dot-matrix printer.
+
+\item{$\bullet$}\pmC\ is crude and unlikely to ever be greatly improved as regards the quality of its Chinese.
+
+\item{$\bullet$}\pmC\ uses a large number of fonts which occupy a finite and
+measurable quantity of diskspace for each font.  Your screen previewer had 
+{\it better} be able to use the same resolution your printer uses, or you
+may experience a little tightness around the disk.  You probably will not want
+the fonts in multiple magsteps (they will just get uglier if you enlarge them).
+
+\item{$\bullet$}\pmC\ is crude and unlikely to ever be greatly improved as regards the quality of its Chinese.
+
+\item{$\bullet$}\pmC\ does not do slanted, bold, or other fancy Chinese although one could
+in principle.  However, insofar as even a minimal installation requires
+88 fonts {\it for Chinese alone}, we must at this point quote The Master:
+\medskip
+{\narrower\narrower\noindent the format of a {\it char\_node} allows for up to 256
+different fonts and up to 256 characters per font; $\ldots$ \TeX\ intended for oriental languages
+will need even more than 256 $\times$ 256 possible characters when we consider different
+sizes and styles of type.\footnote{*}{Donald E. Knuth, {\it \TeX : The Program}.
+Addison Wesley, Reading MA: 1986. (Volume B of {\it Computers and Typesetting}). \S 134, p.~57.\par
+Ahh-hum.  If we wanted to combine different-face or different-size versions of characters in a font, we could make fuller
+use of the fonts which are declared for \pmC.  Since currently only 94 characters are defined in
+each font, we could put a different version of each character into currently empty space in the same font.
+A light rewriting of the macro which handles the chinese characters could then
+select one or the other version of a character depending on what we have indicated our desires to be.
+As of November 21, 1990 I am not convinced that this is worth doing.}
+
+}
+\medskip
+
+\item{$\bullet$}\pmC\ is based on \TeX\ (hooray!), not on  J\TeX\  (hooray!) nor
+any not-known-to-me to-be-extant Chi\TeX\ (huh?) which might
+know how to set type vertically, handle thousands of fonts, make 
+doughnuts, and do all the other things that we might want software to do.
+\pmC, therefore, does not set type vertically, handle thousands of fonts,
+emulate Spads or Spitfires, or any of the other real neat stuff.
+
+\item{$\bullet$}\pmC\ may take a long time to set up if you need to make your
+own fonts.  Preparing {\it one} set of fonts on a NeXT computer for use
+at 400 dpi required a \mf\ run of over 18 hours.  The \mf\ source code
+files for the fonts occupied 17 megabytes of disk space when all were 
+stored.\footnote{\dag}{If one looks at the simple-minded brute-force \mf\ code
+which the \pmC\ fonts use, one may roughly estimate that a staggering number
+of computations (probably even more than eight) are needed to emulate a dot-matrix font through this method.
+There might, indeed, be a better way to do it.  On the other hand, Pac-Man worldwide
+has consumed several hundred million times the number of CPU cycles consumed
+by compiling \pmC\ fonts, so we are not exactly talking about wasting a scarce
+resource, are we?}  You will not ordinarily wish to make up the fonts more
+than once, assuming a relative absence of masochism in your personality makeup, nor will you probably want to keep the \mf\ source code permanently
+{\it since you can mechanically regenerate it.}  
+\bigskip\goodbreak
+\centerline{How to use \pmC}
+\medskip
+Assume a text editor capable of enabling entering text in GB-encoded
+Chinese characters.  Assume a text editor capable of editing text in ``normal''
+Latin characters.  Use the first text editor to prepare a plain text file
+containing the Chinese text; {\it plain text file} means that there are no
+tricky codes in the text file which are intended to be used only by the
+program that produced the file---``ASCII file'' frequently conveys what we
+mean by ``plain text file'', but by virtue of having encoded Chinese, your
+file will not be ASCII.  Use the second text editor to enter the Latin-letter
+strings providing instructions to \TeX; (if your first text editor is o.k. for
+Latin too, you can continue using it for this step! --- but watch out, the JIS 
+and GB encoding schemes have some Latin characters (graphemes) included in the two-byte code
+space: we need ``normal'' Latin (one-byte coded) text).  On a separate line
+before the first line of Chinese, put a line saying ``$\backslash$input pmc $\backslash$beginchinese''.
+Pmc.tex is intended to be the name of a file containing the basic set of 
+instructions for \pmC.  ``$\backslash$beginchinese'' is a \pmC-defined magic-word
+signifying that everything until an ``$\backslash$endchinese'' is to be interpreted
+as Chinese, if possible.  Using whatever text editor you want, incorporate text in
+whatever other language you want.  Other languages will conflict with Chinese in \pmC\ only if they
+use character codes in the range 160 to 254;  such languages must be separated from
+Chinese by enclosing the Chinese in ``$\backslash$beginchinese'' ``$\backslash$endchinese''
+structures.  Create a new last line saying ``$\backslash$bye''.  Put a blank line
+between paragraphs in the text, and use any other \TeX\ commands with which you
+may be familiar to further adorn your text.  Save the file, and say the appropriate
+words to run \TeX\ on your file, preview it, print it, or whatever.
+
+\centerline{What can go wrong}
+
+Well, for one, you may not have an editor for entering Chinese.  [Sorry; \pmC\
+has nothing to offer you if you have no way to compose your text].  Or,
+for another, your editor may not use GB-encoding.  [Easy: convert your text
+to GB-encoding!  (How?  That's not my problem; or, to be a {\it little} more gracious
+about it, there are some converters out there, see if you can find one $\ldots$)].
+You may not know ``any other \TeX\ commands with which you
+may further adorn your text''\footnote{\S}{Careful study will reveal this phrase to be a direct
+quotation of nothing except itself.}  [So take a class].  Something else
+goes wrong. [Fix it].  You don't have a copy of \pmC\null.  [Get one].
+
+\centerline{How to get \pmC}
+
+From a friend is good.  If you have no friend who has \pmC\ and is prepared to make
+a copy for you $\ldots$ (that was supposed to be phrased as delicately as possible) 
+$\ldots$ you may get it through an {\it Established Channel}.  There are a number
+of ``\TeX\ distributions'' which may elect to incorporate \pmC\ in their offerings
+of \TeX\ and \TeX-related software.  You will very likely be able to get a copy
+from the NWCSC, distributors of \TeX\ for Unix systems; they will have to charge you
+a fee, however, as even though they are non-profit they still have to pay their employees, pay phone bills, and all
+the rest of the drag with which I am sure you are familiar.  You might also be able to get it
+electronically and free-of-charge via {\bf ftp} from some place or other, but I
+couldn't tell you where.  As I write, November 21, 1990, none of these alternatives which I
+have suggested will actually work, and there is no way that you can get \pmC\ short
+of enrolling in a course of study at the University of Washington, or you have a friend
+who has done so.
+
+%\tracingall
+\centerline{Are we really going to show any Chinese or what?}
+
+Oh yes, this is roughly how it looks: \beginchinese
+至今为止，大家所用的中文
+编辑器，毋论用的是何输入方式
+都不过于 WYSWYG (What you see is what you get) 类型
+，例如中文 WordStar 即联想汉字
+， 天马，飞马，
+ 五笔字型。  (Please note that we may intermix all
+kinds of other stuff in with the Chinese, such as {\russ Rodina,
+Moskva, Kiev}.
+这些软件有它们好的一面， 即
+直观性强。它们大都用于 IBM 兼容机与 Macintosh 个人微机， 并需
+特殊的中文操作系统来启动机器。然而，它们的弱点却是不可弥补的，
+即输入速度太慢而且太费脑力和眼
+力。 想想看，当键盘
+输入英文时
+
+你只需机械地挥动手指，眼睛和头脑
+全力贯注在屏幕上出现的文章
+十分轻松， 愉快，同时也能保证出好
+文章。但是用中文 WordStar  时，你的
+头脑和眼睛却要繁忙地碾转在打字
+、选字、和文章内容之间，如连续
+两小时如此作业，你将觉得腰酸
+眼痛脑力竭尽，毫无乐趣可言。下回一提起打
+中文你便有一种恐惧感。本人三年
+以来使用中文软件的结论便是如此。
+那末 ChText  用的又是什么方法呢？
+首先 ChText  不是个编辑器，而是个
+拼音 
+
+\endchinese
+
+\bye