Re: Re: Erratum in Unicode book

From: Thomas Chan (thomas@atlas.datexx.com)
Date: Sun Jul 08 2001 - 21:26:58 EDT


On Sun, 8 Jul 2001, Michael (michka) Kaplan wrote:

> From: "James Kass" <jameskass@worldnet.att.net>
> > Perhaps he (てんどうりゅうじ) was lamenting the character's absence
> > in the Han Radical Index section under radical # 85.
> > If all the characters made from the water radical were listed
> > under that radical in the Han Radical Index (and so forth),
> > where would the sport be in looking up CJK code points?
> > The Han Radical Index is particulary useful when the significant
> > radical is known, kind of like having to know the correct
> > spelling of an English word before it can be looked up in an
> > English dictionary.
>
> I suspect you are correct -- but since Unicode does not promise to support
> such a thing (complete decomposability into radical and stroke of all
> unified CJK ideographs), it might be a stretch to consider it an erratum?

I don't think there's any mistake. U+9152 is filed under radical 164 as a
three residual-stroke character because that's where dictionary #1, the
_Kangxi Zidian_, places it as per the rules in "Han Ideograph Arrangement"
on p. 266 of TUS3.0.

What "11" prefers is a more progressive system of filing characters under
radicals that does not require one to know what a character means, which
part is not the phonetic element, etc. e.g., U+554F, wen 'to ask' (also
part of wenti 'problem'; Japanese mondai) is filed under radical 30
"mouth" as an eight residual-stroke character, since that's where
dictionary #1 places it, although some people might prefer to see it as a
three residual-stroke character under radical 169 "gate", such as what is
done in dictionary #3, the _Hanyu Da Zidian_ (but too bad, it's only #3).
Indeed, consider the almost similar character U+95EE, which is the Chinese
simplified form, which is filed as an eight residual-stroke character
under radical 169, because that is what dictionary #3 places it (and
dictionaries #1 and #2, not containing it, thus have no say otherwise
concerning where it is filed).

Thomas Chan
tc31@cornell.edu



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