HOWTO input Chinese characters vertically
Asian languages (CJK) have an other typographical tradition. They used to write their text from top to bottom and from right to left. As in daily life however on digital devices the 'Western' way has taken over.
Internet
To display text vertically on the internet, see the
internet howto
OpenOffice
In OpenOffice Calc, type the text in a cell, right click, Choose
Format Cells ..., choose the
Alignment tab, in text orientation section tick the box next to
vertically stacked to display the text vertically. If you want the text also to be right to left, tick the
Asian layout mode box.
Difficulties
Some of the considerations that need to be made are:
- Does the text need to be written right-to-left in vertical mode
- How to handle non-vertical languages ? do they need to be rotated ?
- Do (not) turn special characters, such as brackets
A very detailed document on the difficulties can be found on unicode website (
link)