On Fri, 27 Apr 2001, David Starner wrote:
> On Fri, Apr 27, 2001 at 01:04:26PM +0200, Karl Pentzlin wrote:
> > If "character numbers" are at last used commonly, e.g. every Chinese
> > businessman can spell his name to every secretary in the world, simply
> > telling them the numbers.
>
> Cool. What makes three - four - five - seven - one better than
> eight - seven - zero - bee? (Which of course means that both of them
> have to share a language, but that was assumed.) And since the
> secretary is transcribing a language he knows (or the buisness
> man's going to have memorize a lot of character's numbers), isn't
> it more likely that the secretary will get the name in
> transliteration?
This situation is not as unusual as it sounds. It wouldn't be unusual for
a Chinese-literate person to pass on the four-digit decimal numbers of the
Chinese telegraph code for a Chinese-illiterate person to transcribe or
transmit. e.g., my surname, a common one, is 7115, which maps to U+9673
(traditional form) or U+9648 (simplified form)--the telegraph code doesn't
distinguish variants.
Karl's scenario is half-right; the hypothetical Chinese businessman can
certainly give code-like numbers for each of the characters in his name,
since they'll be on his documents, e.g., identity cards, immigration
forms, etc. (And even though he won't be giving them personally, they'll
also be used if becomes a disaster victim or a wanted man.) But the code
won't be Unicode in hexadecimal or decimal form.
Thomas Chan
tc31@cornell.edu
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