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

To create a glossary for range name exporting: Repeat the next two steps for each item: To test the entry using Windows Write, WordPad, or another OLE client application (e.g., another document window in Smart Characters):
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Last Modified: March 23, 1996

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