From: Damon Anderson (damon@corigo.com)
Date: Wed Mar 11 2009 - 01:57:11 CST
And on a final note, though we think of the Western Dragon (an over grown
lizard) and an Eastern Dragon (river or water spirit) as being the same,
they actually aren't.
-Damon
On Wed, 11 Mar 2009 08:10:00 +0700, Kenneth Whistler <kenw@sybase.com>
wrote:
>
>> >>> While I do not
>> >> think that we should encode CHINESE ZODIAC DRAGON and CHINESE ZODIAC
>> >> RABBIT, the fact is that in encoding DRAGON and RABBIT we are
>> >> encoding
>> >> characters which can (and should) be used for those functions.
>> >
>> > I disagree again. The character for CHINESE ZODIAC DRAGON
>> > is U+9F8D.
>>
>> No, I think. Emphatically no, indeed. Why? Because the Chinese Zodiac
>> signs are used outside of China where Chinese characters are
>> meaningless. A calendar in Kazakhstan or Vietnam for instance might
>> use the Chinese Zodiac but will very likely not have any Chinese on it.
>
> Many countries outside of China proper may indeed be using
> the Chinese lunar calendar in one way or another. But in
> such cases, they are making use of the system of 10 Celestial
> Stems and 12 Terrestrial Branches, which *are* represented
> by 22 well-known Chinese characters. How that calendrical
> system is translated into Kazakh or Vietnamese, and what
> symbols may then be associated with them is a matter for
> empirical research -- and there may well be additional sets
> of symbols to encode as a result.
>
> But to assert that the emoji pictographs for various animals *are*
> the Chinese Zodiac signs would just be bizarre.
>
> If people want to make use of cutesy animal symbols *from* the
> emoji set to represent Chinese Zodiac signs in some context
> where they can't use (or understand) the actual Chinese
> Terrestrial Branches, then nobody is going to stop them,
> of course.
>
>> > It isn't represented as an emoji of a dragon. Although that doesn't
>> > stop people, of course, from using pictures of animals to
>> > represent the Chinese zodiacal signs, any more than it prevents
>> > Western astrologists from using pictures of mythical figures
>> > and beasts to represent Western zodiacal signs.
>>
>> I don't think it is the same thing. I don't think it is normal or
>> expected to draw CJK characters as pictographic symbols. That is
>> different from the long
>
> Different from what?
>
>>
>> >> It does not matter what Japanese telecoms are using them for.
>> >
>> > Actually, it does.
>>
>> Asserting this does not make it so.
>
> Well, no more than asserting the opposite makes it so.
>
>> >> It must be understood that once any of these characters are
>> >> encoded, they
>> >> CEASE to be "emoji" symbols,
>> >
>> > No, they don't.
>>
>> Oh yes, they do, and I really hope you take this concept on board if
>> you want success encoding these characters in WG2.
>
> Oh no, they don't. lol
>
>> Every character in the standard can be used by everyone, regardless of
>> the origin of the characters. The reason the UTC is requesting these
>> symbols maybe interoperability with a particular environment, but
>> EVERY ONE of those characters will simply be a pictographic symbol in
>> the standard, available for any use, not restricted to cellular
>> telephony.
>
> I didn't say they would be restricted to cellular telephony.
> Of course they wouldn't be. I said they wouldn't cease to
> be emoji symbols. Your claim was as absurd as claiming that
> the Optical Character Recognition symbols at U+2440..U+244A
> cease to be Optical Character Recognition symbols, once they
> are encoded in the UCS and become "available for any use."
>
>> As such, they must be considered in that wider context.
>
> Sure. I have no problem with considering things in a wider context. ;-)
>
>> >> and are just plain old Symbols for Use By Anybody who wants to use
>> >> the Universal Character set.
>> >
>> > They may *additionally* be interpreted as plain old symbols for
>> > arbitrary use by anybody else, to mean whatever they think they
>> > should mean.
>>
>> Oh, come on. Not "whatever they think they should mean". The FIRE
>> ENGINE is not ambiguous as to its meaning.
>
> Of course it is... just like virtually every one of the pictographic
> symbols. It might represent, for example, the fire truck itself,
> or the map location of a fire house, or the concept of firefighting,
> or be extended semantically to refer to a class of emergency vehicles.
> You'd be surprised (or maybe you wouldn't) at how people can
> manipulate visual symbols to mean different things.
>
>> Nor is a RABBIT.
>
> Same thing. It is a cute little bunny rabbit? A hare? A symbol
> of Easter? A symbol of fecundity? A zodiacal sign?
>
>> The
>> Chinese Zodiac makes use of a rabbit
>
> Well, no. It's actually the Asian hare, Lepus brachyurus, different
> from the European hare, Lepus europaeus, and more specifically
> different from the European rabbit, Oryctolagus cuniculus.
>
>> and I really don't think it's a
>> stretch to expect an encoded RABBIT to be used for that purpose -- or
>> that it would be better to encode a different rabbit pictogram for the
>> zodiacal use.
>
> Well, on that general point I would be in (guarded) agreement.
>
> If somebody wants a nice cuddly set of 12 animal symbols to represent
> the Chinese Terrestrial Branches with pictographs of their
> associated animals, then making use of the emoji set of cuddly
> animal pictographic symbols would be fine with me.
>
> In that context, then you would need to understand that:
>
> RABBIT --> hare/rabbit, associated with Terrestrial Branch 4
>
> MOUSE --> rat/mouse, associated with Terrestrial Branch 1
>
> COW --> ox/cow, associated with Terrestrial Branch 2
>
> CHICKEN --> rooster/hen/chicken, associated with Terrestrial Branch 10
>
> Then you're fine.
>
>> > But such use is buyer-beware when picked out of sets encoded for
>> > other purposes.
>>
>> What are you on about?
>
> That if you pick and choose some other set of denotations for
> symbols encoded for a different purpose, you may run into
> trouble, both in terms of range of supported glyph variation
> and in terms of other people's interpretations of the symbols.
> It just comes with the territory.
>
>> The SMOKING and NO SMOKING characters are part
>> of the emoji set. Its use in Japanese telephony is as accidental as
>> the use of the plain old ordinary SMILEY FACE. It's certainly
>> conceivable that the NO SMOKING character could well have been encoded
>> already for other reasons had someone done up a proposal for it.
>
> Of course.
>
>> > Grabbing a couple of animal emoji out of a big set of such
>> > (including many that manifestly nothing to do with zodiacal signs,
>> > such as SNAIL, PENGUIN, OCTOPUS, HAMSTER,
>> > POODLE, ...), and claiming that in RABBIT and DRAGON "we are
>> > encoding characters which can (and should) be used for [the Chinese
>> > zodiacal] functions" strikes me as just such
>> > a buyer-beware mistake.
>>
>> Not at all. I read the emoji animal set as a superset, which contains
>> within it the animals used in Chinese astrology. I don't think that's
>> a stretch, and indeed I'm not the only one who noticed.
>
> Well, it isn't any big coincidence, since the 12 Terrestrial
> Branches are, of course, associated with 12 of the most
> culturally prominent and iconic animals in Chinese culture
> (including the dragon, of course).
>
> I just think its a stretch to claim that they are intended
> as a denotational subset of the emoji referring specifically to Chinese
> zodiacal signs.
>
> --Ken
>
>
-- Damon Anderson, Business Director Mobile: +84 90 834-2421 Email: damon@corigo.com Corigo Vietnam 391B Ly Thuong Kiet Street Ward 9, Tan Binh District Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam http://www.corigo.com
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