Object Linking <br>and Embedding

Use your PC to Master Japanese and Chinese

Object Linking
and Embedding

Using Chinese and Japanese in Other Applications

There are a variety of ways to use Chinese and Japanese characters and text in other applications. You can create Smart Characters objects from within another application, or export characters and text objects(4- 1) from Smart Characters, and import them into a compound destination document. Which methods you use depends upon several factors:

Do you want to use characters as graphic shapes or text?
Do want to be able to edit the text easily at a later time?
Do you need to use the same text in different documents, and does the text need to be updated automatically?
How many separate instances of characters, words, phrases, and paragraphs do you need in a typical destination document?
Are you exporting text that is non-rectangular, or needs to break a line to wrap with other text?

You can use exported text in any of the following ways:

As Smart Characters or native text, to be displayed by applications that are capable of displaying Chinese and Japanese as text.
As a picture. A picture must be edited with an application's built-in graphics editor.
As an embedded object. In this case, your application keeps a copy of the Smart Characters text, so that it can use Smart Characters to edit the object.
As a linked object. Here, your other application saves the file name and range name of the exported Smart Characters object.

In the first case, your Asian language aware application stores just the exported text. Otherwise, it stores two kinds of information in your destination container document: object data, and presentation data. Object data tell your application how to edit the object. Presentation data is used to display or print the object. Smart Characters object data is quite modest in size (a few hundred characters or less). Presentation data, on the other hand, is typically 1000 times larger. Multiple 100,000 byte objects can result in quite large files. Fortunately, the presentation data is highly redundant, and can be compressed to save disk space, either manually, or automatically by being saved on a compressed disk drive volume.

If you need a large quantity of separate objects, or you need text to break across line boundaries, it may be more practical to import the English into Smart Characters rather than the other way around, or use applications that are capable of displaying Chinese and Japanese as text. The ScGDI accessory "hooks" Windows to display characters in most applications.

Inserting Objects from Other Programs

As software and software users become more sophisticated, individual applications provide more powerful ways to manipulate specific kinds of information. Applications are now available that help you create graphs, drawings, worksheets, text documents, slides, electronic mail, and charts -to name only a few. With the linking and embedding features in Smart Characters, you can now bring these separate kinds of information, referred to as objects, together into a single document. This document, referred to as a container document, allows you to make changes to the objects without leaving Smart Characters.

Linking and embedding are based on exchanging information using the Windows clipboard(D- - 9) where you select the object you want to insert into the container document and choose the Copy command to place it on the clipboard. Then, in the container document, you position the insertion point(5- 1) where you want the object to appear and use the Edit | Paste Special command to link or embed it.

Smart Characters can automatically update the information with any changes that occur in the original. For instance, if you link sales data from a worksheet to a report written in Smart Characters, the report can automatically reflect changes to the data in the worksheet. You can also link Smart Characters documents to other applications or documents so that changes made in the Smart Characters documents are reflected in the other applications or documents.

Alternatively, you can embed information from another application or document. This means the information contained in the object actually becomes part of your Smart Characters document; there are no links to other files. For example, you can create a logo in a drawing application and embed it in a Smart Characters document. If you decide to change the design of the logo, you can just double click it, and Smart Characters opens a window of the drawing application. When you've finished making changes, you save the logo, close the drawing window, and return to Smart Characters; the changed logo is in your document. The primary difference between linking and embedding is the location where the actual data for the object is stored. The data for a linked object is stored outside the container document in a source document. Embedded information, however, is stored right in the container document. Keep this difference in mind when deciding whether to link or embed information. If you want to use the information in one document only, its better to embed; in most other cases, its better to link.

See Linking Overview(10- 3) and Embedding Overview(10- 5).

Managing Exported Text

Smart Characters is unique in that it can export links to text in ordinary documents using Windows(D- - 8) OLE(D- - 5) (Object Linking and Embedding). Linked documents require a range name to specify the text to export. The word processing document equivalent to range names is paired bookmarks, that is, bookmarks that enclose selected text. See the Edit | Insert Bookmark(3- 11) command. Bookmarked text is exported using the Edit Copy Range(3- 10) command.

It is convenient to use a company-wide glossary of commonly-used words, names, and phrases indexed by meaningful bookmark names. It is easiest (and least error-prone) to manage a list with just one entry per line.

For an example database, examine two files used in the preparation of this user's guide: Scw2C.sc (Chinese) and Ch2_off.sc (Japanese) in your \Sc directory.

To create a glossary for range name exporting:

Create a new glossary document in a location that users can access.
Type a list of items you wish to export, one per line.

Repeat the next two steps for each item:

Select an item. Do not select the ending paragraph or line break.
Select Edit | Insert | Bookmark and type a meaningful name. Don't use punctuation, except for the underscore character `_'.
Save the glossary as FileName.sc to indicate that it is the master.
For each annotation format you want to export (e.g., annotations hidden or off), select Format | Annotations to set the annotations, and save the glossary under a name that indicates the format (e.g., .chi could be unannotated Chinese, .jpn could be Japanese, etc.).
Make sure that the paragraph and annotations formatting in the Smart Characters glossary doesn't result in excessive character height, which would make it harder to match the baseline when pasting the object.

To test the entry using Windows Write, WordPad, or another OLE client application (e.g., another document window in Smart Characters):

Select Edit | Copy Range and select a phrase to copy to the Windows clipboard(D- - 9).
If necessary, launch an OLE client application, select Edit | Paste Special, and paste a link to the glossary item.
Alternatively, you could also paste a Smart Characters document object, which would allow you to edit the embedded object in the document without changing the original.
Practice sizing the object. You may need to apply subscript character formatting to the object to move it down to visually match text.

Need more info? Go to the Customer Service Page. Questions or comments? E-mail to Apropos Customer Service

Apropos Customer Service home page 617-648-2041
Last Modified: March 23, 1996