What is RustZ
RustZ converts Chinese text between encodings (Big5, GBK, Unicode…) and between Traditional and Simplified Chinese. It is a Rust rewrite of ConvertZ, the Windows freeware by Alfred Li Chi Shing (version 8.02, 2005). ConvertZ only ran on Windows; RustZ is a native program on macOS, Windows and Linux.
What it is for
- Legacy encodings: old Big5 and GBK text files, web pages and source code need to become UTF-8 before today's editors, Git and browsers handle them well.
- Script conversion: Simplified text has to become Traditional the way Taiwan writes it (or the other way round) — word by word, not character by character. 头发 is 頭髮 and 发展 is 發展, even though both 发 are the same character.
- Mojibake: text opened with the wrong encoding — say, a Big5 file opened as GBK — can be turned back into what it was.
- Filenames: a folder full of Simplified filenames can be renamed to Traditional in one go.
Two programs
| Program | What it does |
|---|---|
rustz | The desktop app: file conversion, text conversion, renaming, custom dictionary and settings |
rustz-cli | The command-line tool. Its switches match ConvertZ's ConCmd, so batch files and scripts keep working |
Both read the same settings file and custom dictionary, so options you set in the app also apply on the command line.
Two conversion engines
- OpenCC (default) splits text into phrases with OpenCC's dictionary of almost 50,000 entries and converts phrase by phrase. You can choose Taiwan, Hong Kong or OpenCC standard glyphs, and Taiwan vocabulary (软件 ↔ 軟體).
- ConvertZ reuses ConvertZ 8.02's own character table and fix lists, and gives exactly the same results as the original. Use it when you are migrating from ConvertZ and need identical output.
Both check your custom dictionary first. How they work is described in Conversion engines.
Compared with ConvertZ
Kept: Big5, GBK, Unicode, HZ and Japanese encodings, detection, fix lists, the HTML charset fix, &#NNNN; entities, the ignore list, and ConCmd's command-line switches.
Added: phrase-based conversion with OpenCC, a custom dictionary, preview before writing, filename conversion, mojibake repair with automatic guessing, full-width/half-width conversion, light and dark themes, and staying in the menu bar or system tray.
See Coming from ConvertZ for the full mapping and the places where behaviour differs.
Not there yet
- Prebuilt downloads — for now you build it from source.
- ConvertZ's MP3 ID3 tag conversion, global hotkeys, and automatic paste after conversion.
- The interface is in Traditional Chinese only. This manual gives the English meaning next to each label.