From: vunzndi@vfemail.net
Date: Sat Jan 27 2007 - 01:58:16 CST
Quoting "John H. Jenkins" <jenkins@apple.com>:
>
> On Jan 25, 2007, at 9:57 PM, vunzndi@vfemail.net wrote:
>
>> Reaserch was done in the first half of the 20th century
>
> I'm assuming that there was also a big push in, say, the 19th century
> from Protestant missionaries trying to publish Bibles in the local
> dialects. (IIRC there was a 19th century Cantonese Bible published,
> which I assume is different from the one currently in print.)
>
>> and from the 1980's onwards research has been increasing, though
>> admittedly there is a lot of room for improvement. There is at
>> least for some of these enough research to make a start on
>> encoding, one does not need to know every character, before
>> starting to encode.
>
> This is very true.
Actaully the name I had in mind was Fang Kuei Li who produced
something, but this was more a observtion that research did start up
again after the cultural revolution.
>
>> Encoding the well researched parts then makes it easier to research
>> the rest. Though it would seem that many researchers are not
>> always very aware of what has been done by others, and it almost
>> goes without saying much literaure is not in English.
>>
>
> Cantonese is the one example I'm reasonably familiar with, and I know
> this is definitely the case there. There are numerous
> Cantonese-specific words which are written in different ways simply
> because different people made up the needed ideographs without knowing
> that someone else had already done it.
>
The same is still happening for some languages.
>> I have been researching such characters, for about five years, the
>> limited amount of existing research doesn't make it hard to find
>> something new. I have also been consisdering some of the encoding
>> and other computer realted issues involved and would be very
>> interested to know of others working on this area.
>
> And I should mention that I, for one, appreciate the work that you're
> doing. I temporarily forgot about the work that's going on in the PRC
> for some, at least, of the local dialects. Such efforts are laudable
> and need to be encouraged.
>
Actually the encoding side I have been looking into because I am
rather lazy, and there is a limit to the number of times I am prepared
to paste images into a word document, and am rather to used to WYSISYG
software.
> I get the impression that the sheer size of the PRC works against the
> encoding efforts here because not even the people involved in the
> computer standardization community have the contacts or resources to
> know what to do. For example, I sometimes hear rumors that Pollard is
> still in active use but have yet to find anyone who can actually put me
> in contact with the people who are using it.
>
Yes.
As to Pollard uses I am not so sure. Software wise publishers here
use Fangzheng, which includes good tools for making new characters,
which a stored in an accopanying file, and it is consider usual to
have to make a few more characters from time to time.
> ========
> John H. Jenkins
> jenkins@apple.com
> jhjenkins@mac.com
> http://homepage.mac.com/jhjenkins/
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