Setting up your system

You have to "set-up" your browser once only.

Setting up your browser to see the Translated Songs

Each song in this archive consists of an HTML page that can be seen using a World Wide Web browser such as the Microsoft Internet Explorer. Each song has addition pages that only be seen if you add extra process (a PDF viewer) to your browser. If you follow the instructions here then you will be able to see the whole content of the Translated Songs.

In order to be able to look at all the material in this archive it is necessary to set up your browser to display PDF files. PDF (Portable Document Format) is a special type of file that can display any type of data. In the case of this archive the complication is the special characters in the Ahmao font that is used to write Miao text. A document containing Miao characters is built in PDF format and can only be seen if the browser has a PDF viewer associated with it.

A PDF viewer, the Adobe Acrobat Reader, can be downloaded from the Adobe Acrobat web site at http://www.adobe.com.

  1. Go to the site and follow the link to Product Index
  2. Scroll down the Adobe Products to find Adobe Acrobat Reader and click on the link
  3. Click on "Download Now"
  4. Fill in Steps 1, 2 and 3 and then click on Download
The file is 4MBytes and you can place it in any convenient directory

When you have all the file (called something like rs405eng.exe, an executable program) on your system, run the program (on a Windows system you can do this by double-clicking the file) and follow the instructions.

If everything goes well the Acrobat Reader will be installed and connected to the browser. The browser will now be able to diplay documents in the PDF format.

Viewing the Original, Hand-written, Documents

You can see the original documents from which the archive was built. The process of showing the individual pages involves some advanced features of Java (a computer programming language) and it is possible that your system does not have these features installed.

To see if your system is set up correctly, try to view the three pages that make up the first song (M101) of Document A. Click here to see the pages - a new window will open. Note: when you have finished verifying the page viewing process, close the new window.

If you have seen something that looks like this


then your system is set up to see the original documents.

If the centre of the window is a blank rectangle then it is most likely that your system is missing the necessary bits of Java.

The easiest way to make this work is to download the Java Runtime Environment (JRE) from the Java web site (www.java.com) and install it on your system. From the Sun front page follow the link to Free Download and select the software that will match your system. Remember, you only need to download the JRE.

Miao characters not showing correctly

If you are using the Glossary or looking at the original documents, it is possible that the Miao characters in the Ahmao font are not shown correctly. If CÍ KÏ XÃ CTÎ XÃ T CK does not look something like then the easiest thing to do is to install the Ahmao font.

Installing the Ahmao font

You can download a copy of the font here.

Download the font by a right click on Ahmao.ttf
Download the font by a right click on Ahmao.fot

In order to use this font you must install the font on your system.

  1. Download the two font files and place them in a conveneient directory
  2. Click on Start, then Setting, then Control Panel
  3. In the Control Panel, double click on Fonts. A window with all the installed fonts will appear.
  4. Click on File and in the drop-down menu, click on Install New Font... The Add Fonts window will appear.
  5. In the Folders box, choose the directory that contains the Ahmao files. Ahmao (True Type) will appear in the List of Fonts. Select this.
  6. Click on OK.
The font will be installed and will appear in all the drop down lists (e.g. in Word or Wordpad).