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Hangul (Windows)

Hangul 2007
Developer(s)	Haansoft Corporation
Stable release	Hangul 2007 / August 2006
Operating system	Microsoft Windows
Type	Word processor
License	Proprietary
Website	www.haansoft.com

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 is derived from the Korean word Hangul (Korean: 한글, hangeul) for the alphabet used to write Korean.

Haansoft was on the verge of bankruptcy in after the release of its 2002 version, due to the widespread use of illegal copies. A 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 support for opening and saving of files in Microsoft Word format, but users are not necessarily aware of this. Consequently, Korean Hangul users may often send files to non-Koreans in .hwp format, not realizing the recipient will be unable to open such files.^[1]

Recent versions also provide an English user interface depending on the location setting of the user's environment.

Hangul will support reading and writing of Office Open XML and OpenDocument files in its next version for Windows, which will be published in the end of 2009.^[2]

Hangul Viewer

Haansoft offer a Hangul document viewer program freely available on its website called "Hangul Viewer 2007" (한/글 뷰어 2007). Non-Korean speakers may download the program by clicking the small image of the floppy disk on the download page [1]

Hangul Viewer 2007 is not capable of copying its text to the Windows clipboard, and although it can print to PDF via software such as CutePDF Writer, attempts to copy from the resulting PDF can result in characters being in the wrong order. However, it is possible to select text in Hangul Viewer, right-click on it, and select Daum Search, then right-click on the resulting Internet Explorer window and select Properties; the text that had been selected in Hangul Viewer will be part of the page's Address and can be selected and copied with Control-C, albeit without the line breaks.

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)

Hangul 2010 (2010): This is future version of Hangul. It will realese in March 3, 2010.^[3]

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

Nexcel : spreadsheet software

Advantages

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 South Korea and has a large user base; many South Koreans begin their word processing life with Hangul, not with Microsoft Word.^{[citation needed]}

Hangul provides more support for specific Korean language features than international programs.^{[clarification needed]} 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.

Disadvantages

Although the HWP format has become a standard in South Korea similar to DOC, PDF or RTF files in other countries^{[citation needed]}, the program and format is not widely used outside South Korea.

See also

• Ichitaro
• List of word processors
• Comparison of word processors
• List of Korea-related topics

References

External links

• Official site:
  • Hancom Office offical homepage. Uses Flash. (English)
  • Haansoft's introduction to Hangul 2004 – Somewhat outdated, for the latest version is Hangul 2007. Does not use Flash. (English)