Unicode Discussion wrote:
> Table 6-25 and the related text is only a short summary of the
> unification rules. There is more documentation on it for example
> in the explanatory part of JIS 221 (Japanese version of ISO 10646).
> There, the grass radical is listed as an example of components
> unified because they were considered to be glyph variants.
If it's in 221, don't you think it should be in TUS 2.0 as well? (^_^)
I'm IN Japan and I have a hard time getting JIS documents (my company
gets the "JIS Handbooks," but its summary of 221 is useless for doing
any really work)... I can order a copy of TUS 2.0 and have it at my door
faster than I can order a JIS doc from the bookstore (one of the five
largest in Japan) two subway stops away... Haven't compared the speed of
obtaining ISO docs versus JIS docs yet. ;)
For the record, I'm the non-Japanese here that reads English fluently,
and we have two copies of TUS 2.0, one copy of TUS 1.0 vol 2, zero
copies of JIS 221.
The poor guys and gals have to use a E-J (online) dictionary/translator
to read the Unicode web site, and they gave up on the Unicode mailing
list long ago. Perhaps this prevalence of English is one reason for the
false rumor that goes around the Han circles saying that Unihan was
designed by English speakers who don't understand Hanxi/Hanja/Kanji.
My favorite .sig file that I saw on a fj.* group was a parody of
Unicode's slogan:
When the world wants to talk, it speaks Unicode.
But when the world wants to talk about Unicode, it speaks English. (T-T)
[for those unfamiliar with Japanese style e-mail emoticons, (T-T) is a
crying smiley]
> Even for school, there is more variance allowed than one usually
> thinks. I have a handbook for Japanese school teachers that has
> a page for each character, from first to sixth grade, and it's
> amazing how many variants it lists as being acceptable.
The only official guide I know of (for Japanese-- don't know about other
languages) for writing order and variants is $BI.=g;XF3$N<j$S$-(J (Hitsujun
Shidou No Tebiki), published by $BJ8It>J(J (Monbushou; Japanese Ministry of
Education) in 1958. Note that this document concerns plain $B\4=q(J (Kaisho;
square style) Han characters, not calligraphy.
In its "writing variations" section, it lists exactly eight examples for
recognized stroke order variations, and gives the "preferred" writing
order for all of them.
-- Adrian Havill <URL:http://www.threeweb.ad.jp/> Engineering Division, System Planning & Production Section
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.2 : Tue Jul 10 2001 - 17:20:34 EDT