Hangul (word processor)

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Hangul (Windows)

Hangul 2007
Developed by Haansoft Corporation
Latest release Hangul 2007 / August 2006
OS Microsoft Windows
Genre Word processor
License Proprietary
Website www.haansoft.com
Hangul (Linux)
Developed by Haansoft Corporation
Latest release Hangul 2008 Linux / April 2008
OS Linux
Development status Released
Genre Word processor
License Proprietary
Website www.haansoft.com
Hangul (Mac OS X)
Developed by Haansoft Corporation
Latest release Hangul 2006 / 25 April 2006
OS Mac OS X
Platform Intel
Development status Released but unmaintained
Genre Word processor
License Proprietary
Website none
Hangul (Mac OS)
Developed by Haansoft Corporation
Latest release Hangul 97 / 1998
OS Mac OS
Platform PowerPC
Development status Unmaintained
Genre Word processor
License Proprietary
Website none
Hangul Word Processor
Hangul (아래아) 한글, 한/글 or ᄒᆞᆫ글
Revised Romanization (Araea) Han(-)geul
McCune-Reischauer (Araea) Han'gŭl

Hangul (also known as Hangul Word Processor or HWP) is a proprietary word processing application published by the South Korean company Haansoft Corporation. It is used extensively in South Korea, especially by the government.

Hangul's support for the special needs of the Korean written language has gained it widespread use in South Korea. Microsoft Word and Hangul are used alongside each other in many South Korean companies.

The software's name, Hangul, is derived from the Korean word (Korean: 한글, hangeul) for the alphabet used to write Korean (see the Hangul article for an explanation of the writing system).

Haansoft was on the verge of bankruptcy in after the release of its 2002 version, due to the widespread use of illegal copies. A widespread campaign to support the development of Korean software and promote the purchase of legal copies of Hangul allowed Haansoft to recover.

Hangul saves documents in HWP format, with the filename extension *.hwp. HWP files, up to the versions created with Hangul '97, can be opened with OpenOffice.org. However, files created with later editions of Hangul, including Hangul Wordian, Hangul 2002, Hangul 2005 and Hangul 2007 cannot be opened with OpenOffice.org, due to the major changes in the document structure. These later versions of Hangul provide adequate support for Microsoft Word .DOC format, the de facto standard in word processing applications. These versions also provide an English user interface depending on the location setting of the user's environment.

Haansoft offers an online version of Hangul called "Nethangul" that can be used from computers connected to the internet for a moderate fee.

To open HWP files in a non-Korean Windows system with Microsoft Office installed, users can download and execute a conversion program [1], which enables files to be opened with Microsoft Word. This program, however, can only be used with files created with Microsoft Word 2000 and below. Haansoft has also a Hangul document viewer program freely available on its website called "Hangul Viewer 2007" (한/글 뷰어 2007) [2].

Contents

[edit] Versions

Hangul has many versions, the latest of which is Hangul 2007 for Windows, Hangul 2008 Linux for Linux, and Hangul 2006 for Mac OS X.

Previous versions have included:

MS-DOS
Hangul 0.9, 1.0, 1.1, 1.2 (1989)
Hangul 1.2L, 1.3L (1990)
Hangul 1.5, 1.51, 1.52 (1991)
Hangul 2.0 Pro/Basic (1992)
Hangul 2.1 Pro/Basic/Test/Little (1993)
Hangul 2.5 (1994)
Hangul 3.0 (1995)


Windows
Hangul 3.0, 3.0a, 3.0b (1995)
Hangul 96, International, Japanese (1996)
Hangul 97, 97 strengthen, 815 special edition (1998)
Hangul Wordian, Hangul for Kids (2000)
Hangul 2002 (2001)
Hangul 2004 (2003)
Hangul 2005 (2004)
Hangul 2007 (2006)
Mac OS
Hangul 96, 97 (1998)
Hangul 2006 (2006) : PPC binary
Unix
Hangul X 1.0, X 3.0 (1995)
Linux
Hangul X R4 (1999, bundled in Mizi Linux 1 and 1.1)
Hangul X R5 (2000, included in Hancom Office 2)
Hangul 2008 Linux (2008, included in Hancom Office 2008 Linux)
Other related software
Net Hangul (2002, Hangul 2002 SE based)
Documan (Hangul with USB storage)
Hancom Slide : presentation program
Nexel : spreadsheet software

[edit] Advantages

See also: Korean language and computers

Hangul, as well as other Haansoft products, is a more affordable alternative to non-native comparable programs such as Microsoft Word. Furthermore, Hangul is widely supported in Korea and has a large user base; many Koreans begin their word processing life with Hangul, not with Microsoft Word.

Hangul provides more support for specific Korean language features than international programs; Hangul comes with a wide selection of fonts and not only supports Korean hanja, Chinese traditional and simplified hanzi, and Japanese kanji and kana, but even gugyeol characters and obsolete jamo.

[edit] Disadvantages

Although the HWP format has become a standard in Korea similar to DOC, PDF or RTF files in other countries, the program and format is not widely used outside Korea.

[edit] See also

[edit] External links

Languages