At 07:01 PM 6/26/2001, you wrote:
>Dear Edward:
>
>Sorry for the delay in coming back to unanswered question from your last
>email.
No trouble. I have the same problem.
Your book arrived, and it immediately cleared up a few points for me. I had
not seen anything explaining the use of Cangjie encoding for Simplified
characters.
>1) Unicode:
>Thank you warmly for your offer to help on this topic. Chu's team told me
>they have one person (Jason) who will be doing the Unicode tables soon.
Some of us on the Unicode list would like to get in contact with Jason,
either in English or Chinese. Please give him my e-mail address.
>He said he had almost completed other CJC tables and sent me the attached
>zip file which I forward to you for your consideration.
Very interesting. Is there a PostScript or TrueType font with all of the
Chinese characters for viewing this table? I can only see the characters in
MS Arial Unicode, which covers Unicode 2, but misses a great many
characters in the table. What is the definition for the column headed Wen,
which runs from x8000 to xFC5B?
>All these tables, including the Unicode one, will be done according to the
>6th version
Do you mean 5th here?
>of Cang jie, which is slightly different from the one found on most
>present system that are based on Cang Jie version 3. The differences
>between Version 3 and 5 were explained in "Cang Jie Input Method The Hand
>Book" by Michelle Shen Honglian, the long time assistant of Mr. Chu. Also,
>from their website <http://www.cbbflabs.com>www.cbbflabs.com can be
>downloaded different documents related to cangjie.
>(<http://www.cbflabs.com/tec.htm>http://www.cbflabs.com/tec.htm)
I'll take a look.
>Very frankly, I am not yet very familiar with the Unicode issues.
You can find code charts on the Unicode Web site, http://www.unicode.org.
Unicode 1.0 included 20,902 Han characters covering Big Five, GB 2312, and
the other major national and corporate standards for Chinese, Japanese, and
Korean in use before 1990. The biggest issue, which was considered very
carefully for a long time, was unification of characters from different
character set standards that were clearly historically the same. The work
on Han unification in Unicode was coordinated with the development of GB
13000. This character block begins at U+4E00.
Unicode 2.0 did not add any new Han characters, but defined the surrogate
mechanism, which expands Unicode from 65,536 codes to over a million.
Unicode 3.0 added 6,582 Han characters as Han Extension A, starting at
U+3400, and 42,711 characters as Han Vertical Extension B, in Plane 2,
starting at U+20000. The code chart for Extension B is not yet posted.
>My first step was to present principles the CJ method as it is found on
>main stream systems, and be detailed enough so that the CJ book can help
>students to learn by themselves, and teacher to teach it if interest
>arises. We can add any additional question, like your study on "the
>differences between Cangjie IMEs on different platforms" on the net. As I
>am sure you have very good ideas on all these matters, I will be happy to
>do anything possible upon your suggestions..
Your approach is certainly correct for users of current systems. There is
no advantage in supporting Extensions A and B in Cangjie until there are
fonts for them.
>2) As for the arguments in the presentation at the GCCE conference ( "Cang
>Jie should be taught to students of Chinese as a second language") , they
>were already presented in pages XIII and XIV of the CJ book ( For
>example: -Point 2 was illustrated by the fact that "puzzle" like games
>using parts of Chinese characters to be re-assembled by the learner are
>used in Chinese teaching software (FarEast Books Co "Multimedia Chinese
>Dictionary" for example). If you have some ideas on how to illustrated
>this point better... I will be happy to know.
I use Cangjie to access my character database, since it is usually much
faster than radical and stroke count, and I usually don't know the Chinese
pronunciation of characters I need to look up. The database gives me
Radical number, Stroke count, Chinese, Japanese, and Korean pronunciations,
and the numbers for the character entries in the Nelson and Mathews
dictionaries. I would like to have a professional-quality electronic Han
dictionary that included all of these lookup techniques and more. Jack
Halpern in Japan has the materials for such a dictionary covering Unicode
2, but no publisher.
I'm also exploring the use of Cangjie for helping Chinese-Americans who are
fluent in spoken Chinese but never learned to read and write Chinese.
>all the best
>
>Eddy
>
>
>----- Original Message -----
>From: <mailto:edward.cherlin.sy.67@aya.yale.edu>Edward Cherlin
>To: <mailto:edouard@ms5.hinet.net>eddy
>Cc: <mailto:celina@layer3.com.tw>Celina Chen ;
><mailto:laurel@multilingual.com>Laurel Wagers
>Sent: Tuesday, June 12, 2001 1:12 AM
>Subject: Re: Book review: Cang Method
>
>At 9:58 AM +0800 6/11/01, eddy wrote:
> >Dear Edward:
> >
> >I just came back from the Global Conference on Computer in Education that
> >took
> >place this weekend in Zong Yang University in Taiwan, and where I presented
> >the view that "Cang Jie should be taught to students of Chinese as a second
> >language"
> <http://gccce2001.src.ncu.edu.tw/eng/paper_eng.htm>http://gccce2001.src.ncu.edu.tw/eng/paper_eng.htm
>
>Good. Can you send me a copy of your paper?
>
> >I was very happy to find your email.
> >Thank you for having noticed my book The "Cang jie Method".
> >You are perceptive and totally right: this book can help many many students
> >and user of Chinese in the computer.
> >
> >I am curious: have you heard of this method before?
>
>My first serious contact with Han characters was in the Peace Corps
>in Korea, and my following year in a Buddhist monastery in Japan. I
>started learning Chinese at Durham University in England in 1972 in
>order to work on Buddhist writings. I was in charge of a Buddhist
>monastery nearby in Northumberland at the time.
>
>I learned CangJie from the Chinese book Cangjieshurufa Step by Step.
>(I'm sorry, this mailer doesn't let me send Han characters.) Recently
>I have been putting together a tutorial on Cangjie in English, which
>I intended to post on the Internet. I added several points which were
>not covered in the book, such as the difficulty that comes from font
>variations, where the shapes to be typed don't appear in the printed
>form, and the differences between Cangjie IMEs on different platforms.
>
>I am on the Unicode mailing list. We have considered the question of
>extending Cangjie to the full range of Han characters. This will be a
>lot of work, but it will soon be very important. Some of the list
>members would be interested in working on this extension, and we
>would like to hear what Mr. Zhu thinks about it.
>
> >( In Taiwan and HKG it
> >is the most famous, but it did get much chance abroad --as there was no
> >books explaining it other than the many ones in Chinese).
>
>Exactly right. In addition, the help files for the Cangjie IMEs in
>Windows and the Macintosh OS are in Chinese only.
>
> >We will soon prepare translations in French and in Chinese.
>
>Excellent.
>
> >I asked the inventor's office in Taipei to send you a copy of the book. You
> >will receive it soon. At that time, please do not hesitate to contact me
> >for any questions.
>
>Thank you.
>
>Does your publisher have plans for U.S. and other international
>distribution? I told Amazon to get it, and I know that many
>university bookstores will need to offer it.
>
> >Best regards
> >
> >Edouard Butler
> >
> >
> >
> >> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
> >> MESSAGE SENT THROUGH YOUR WEBSITE
> >> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
> >>
> >> Suggestion = I would like to review your book, Cang Jie Method, in
> >Multilingual Computers & Communications. As the first resource in
> English on
> >the complete Cang Jie entry method, it should be very important to language
> >students.
> >>
> >> Please send a copy to
> >>
> >> Edward Cherlin
> >> 18640 Cynthia Ave.
> >> Cupertino CA 95014
> >>
> >> If you would like further information, you can contact me at
> >>
> >> 1 408 255 2939
> >> <mailto:cherlin@pacbell.net>cherlin@pacbell.net
> >>
> <mailto:edward.cherlin.sy.67@aya.yale.edu>edward.cherlin.sy.67@aya.yale.edu
> >>
> >> and you can contact the Managing Editor of the magazine, Laurel
> Wagers, at
> >laurel@multilingual.com
>
>--
>
>Edward Cherlin
>Generalist
>"A knot!" exclaimed Alice. "Oh, do let me help to undo it."
>Alice in Wonderland
>
Edward Cherlin
Generalist
"A knot! Oh, do let me help to undo it."
Alice in Wonderland
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