From: Andrew C. West (andrewcwest@alumni.princeton.edu)
Date: Tue May 13 2003 - 11:58:11 EDT
On Tue, 13 May 2003 09:52:05 -0400, "Gary P. Grosso" wrote:
> Using Radical/Stroke method will first group the indexes by radical,
> and then stroke. Stroke method only groups indexes by strokes of
> Chinese word. Since Stroke method is much easier to look up, it has
> become the most popular sorting method in Traditional Chinese.
> Radical/Stroke method is acceptable but it's not a usual practice in
> Traditional Chinese.
No, exactly the opposite ! Radical/Stroke method is not only much easier to look
up than plain Stroke count, but is also far more prevalent. As you say, to
implement sorting by stroke alone would entail maintaining a stroke database for
all ideographs. You can get this information from the Unihan database, but then
you'd also need to sub-sort by stroke type of the first stroke of the ideograph,
and you'd have to work that out for yourself. If I were you I simply wouldn't
bother.
Having said that, in Microsoft Word if you set the language to Chinese (Taiwan)
it will allow you to sort by plain stroke order, and if you set the language to
Chinese (PRC) it will allow you to sort by plain stroke order or pinyin syllable
order. Personally I think that a pinyin sort is more useful than a plain stroke
sort, but it'll take a lot of hard work to implement either of them ... it all
depends on what you need how far you want to go.
Regards,
Andrew
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