I've had my C700 for about a week and a half at the time of this writing (March 17), and am by no means an expert on the Zaurus community or its software. With that in mind, here are my observations:
You can place the C700 in one of three different "modes" with regard to Japanese/English conversion. There's all Japanese, there's all English, and then there's a kind of meta-mode where the machine thinks it's Japanese, so Japanese support still works when you want it to, but the programs and menus are still in English. This meta-mode is really good for someone whose native language is English but is studying Japanese or occasionally works with Japanese text.
Until I think of or find more, there seem to be four things to worry about, when converting the C700 to Japanese, Japanese with English menus and text, or English only. There may be more things, but these are the only ones I've found so far.
Before I explain what parts need to be changed, I should give some background about what I've learned about language support on the C700.
Programs have to display text. Program text comes from one of three places: hard-coded inside the program and unchangable regardless of language; located in a settings file with different lines for different languages; or hard-coded inside the program but wrapped in a tr() function, which makes the text translatable. (see http://www.trolltech.com/products/qt/whitepaper/qt-whitepaper-8-3.html for that tr() function)
There are not too many hard-coded text strings that can't be changed. Most of the menus, icons, and customizable stuff (categories in the AddressBook, for example) are contained in plain text files that can be edited and changed. For most of the programs, they contain English text already (frequently rather broken English), but there's a call to that tr() function to try to convert the text to some other language before it's displayed.
This is where the system locale comes in. Programs use that system locale to try to figure out what language to render text in. Programs that are reading from plain text files will look for the lines that have the locale in brackets, to know which line to use. Programs that have text hard-coded but wrapped in tr() functions use .qm files in /home/QtPalmtop/i18n/ to translate their text. In the case of Japanese text in programs, the program takes the text (tr("Cancel")) and looks it up in the .qm file for that program, and then displays the translated text (katakana "KANSERU").
If you delete the .qm file, then even though the system locale still says the program should translate itself, it won't be able to translate itself. It'll revert back to English.
OK, with that out of the way, here are the changes you need to make to your C700.
First is the locale string. There is a file called locale.conf in /home/zaurus/Settings which contains a line:
Language = xx
set the xx to 'ja' for normal Japanese font support and to make programs try to use the 'ja' locale. Set the xx to 'en' for mostly crippled Japanese font support (unless you follow the directions available elsewhere on the net for ripping out all but the unifont and unismall fonts). That is, if you want to keep the fonts 'fixed, helvetica, micro, smallsmooth, smoothtimes' and still be able to display Japanese, you should leave the locale set to 'ja' and tweak the system as described below.
If you left your system in the 'ja' locale, you need to move some files out of the way to convert programs to English. Go to the directory /home/QtPalmtop/i18n/ja and create a subdirectory 'hide'. Move all of the .qm files into 'hide'. You can experiment with this if you like, moving files in and out to see what programs are affected. So far I have hidden all except: libcrim.qm libjpn50pad.qm libjpnktnpad.qm libjpnnumpad.qm libjpnsympad.qm
Second is a separate hack just for HancomMobileWord. If you move the file /home/QtPalmtop/bin/word-eucJP.rc away to another directory, HancomMobileWord (aka HancomWord or Hancom Word) will come up in English. I know this hack is necessary for people who set their locale to en -- I imagine it's probably also necessary for locale ja with English text.
Third is a rather tedious edit of some text configuration files, to trade out Japanese text for English text.
Look in the directory /home/QtPalmtop/apps/ -- there are lots of .desktop files in there. Each one of those needs to be edited.
If you've set your locale to en, add a line
Name[en]=xxxxx
to each of those files, or replace the existing Name[en] line if it's already there. If you've set your locale to ja, edit the Name[ja]= line in each .desktop file. Don't worry -- there's already several comment fields in each file that describe in English what the program does, so it should be easy to come up with English text names for everything.
You should probably also edit /home/zaurus/Settings/AddressBook.conf and change the Japanese-language fields to English fields. Update the following lines:
Category0 = Work Phone
Category1 = Work Fax
Category10 = Home Zip
Category11 = Home State
Category12 = Home City
Category13 = Home Street
Category14 = Birthday
Category15 = Work Country
Category16 = Home Country
Category17 = Work Web Page
Category18 = Home Web Page
Category19 = Work Mobile
Category2 = Work Zip
Category20 = Work Pager
Category21 = Anniversary
Category22 = Nickname
Category23 = Middle Name
Category24 = Spouse
Category3 = Work State
Category4 = Work City
Category5 = Work Street
Category6 = Emails
Category7 = Home Mobile
Category8 = Home Phone
Category9 = Home Fax
and also:
Items = Work Phone,Work Fax,Work Zip,Work State,Work City,Work Street,Emails,Home Mobile,Home Phone,Home Fax,Home Zip,Home State,Home City,Home Street,Birthday,
(all on one line)
For the date and time applet, each city's time zone is stored in English plain text, but there's a separate "zone name" that can be internationalized. For example when using the original Japanese settings, Zone3 might equal "America/New_York" but ZoneName3 might equal "NYUUYOKKU" in katakana. If your locale is set to en, or if locale is ja but you've hidden the translation files as above, you can just go into the CityTime applet and change everything yourself. Click one of the locale buttons written in Japanese, and you'll see a list of zones and cities in English. Pick a zone and click OK, and the button that was previously in Japanese will now be in English. Do the same for the rest of the buttons.
Or, you can edit /home/zaurus/Settings/CityTime.conf
ZoneName1 = New York
ZoneName2 = Los Angeles
ZoneName3 = London
ZoneName4 = Paris
ZoneName5 = Hong Kong
ZoneName6 = Tokyo
Also, in /home/zaurus/Settings/ qtmail.conf and qtmail_account.conf
accountname = Synchronization
In /home/zaurus/Settings/sharplist.conf there's a line 'strings=' -- fill in a semicolon-delimited list of some good default schedule items.
A bit farther down is a list of some default to-do list items. Again, erase the Japanese and fill in that strings= line with some default items.
Also, in /home/zaurus/Settings/todo.conf change FontLogicalSize=0 to FontLogicalSize=-1 to make a bit more room in the To-Do applet for English text (which tends to be longer and flatter, and needs extra room).
Fourth -- well, I don't know how to tell people how to do step 4 yet. My unit has some extra programs for an English keyboard and handwriting recognition, Sharp SpaceTown (whatever that is), and a Japanese e-book reader called BunkoViewer. There were also some minor changes made to some of the system-related scripts and config files, but these aren't related to English conversion. Once I figure out where those programs come from, I'll post more information.
That's all for now -- enjoy your cheaper English C700!
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