On Sat, 22 Dec 2001, Michael (michka) Kaplan wrote:
(See my reply below--I'd like to retain Michael's ASCII art for purposes
of illustration, hence the length.)
> Robert (11 digit boy) said:
> > font is used to display Japanese or such. I think that
> > there is a certain 5-stroke character that will answer it.
> > It is U+5E73.
>
> Well, there is a difference here:
>
> Japanese/CHS version:
> ----------
> \ | /
> \ | /
> \ | /
> ----+-----
> |
> |
>
> Korean/CHT version:
> ----------
> / | \
> / | \
> / | \
> ----+-----
> |
> |
>
> Although I suppose this could be font differences, too? "Pseudo Verified" on
> a WinXP system with the following fonts:
Yes, there are simply font differences. The latter form, with the
diagonal strokes arranged like / \, is the more canonical form, typically
seen in printing when using the kinds of fonts that you tested with.
However, the former form, with the diagonal strokes positioned like \ /,
is more of a handwritten form, although you may see it in fonts that more
resemble handwriting, like the brush-like kaishu(zh)/kaisho(ja) styles
(which were not represented in a limited font survey). Both forms are
fine in Traditional Chinese practice. PRC practice (i.e., "Simplified
Chinese") tends to have made even the printing forms resemble the
handwritten form, although I do not doubt that a Simplified Chinese
reader would accept the / \ form too. I won't presume to speak for
Japanese and Koreans, but I suspect the two forms are interchangeable for
them too (comments, please).
In any case, note the last example in Table 10-4 "Ideographs Unified" in
TUS3.0 p. 265 shows that the rotated strokes/dots are unified.
I'd like to caution against the use of fonts to shows national differences
(or lack of them), not only because a font can only show one glyph (and
does not account for scenarios where two interchangeble glyphs are
acceptable), but also because such font surveys are often poorly
controlled for variables. For example, in Michael's survey of Win XP
fonts (I'm not criticizing you specifically, Michael, so I hope you
do not take this personally) there were two font styles represented for
most locales: the serifed Ming(zh)/Song(zh)/Mincho(ja) and sans serif
Hei(zh)/Gothic(zh). However, additional styles such as the brush-like Kai
are not represented, which sometimes will yield different conclusions,
such as for the appearance of the lower left corner of U+5317 'north'.
Second, in such font surveys, the fonts for each locale often come from
different vendors. For instance, see section #4 of a webpage of samples I
created for U+76F4 'straight'[1], which I gave the URL to Suzanne Topping
for (though not on this list). The MingLiU and AR Mingti2L Big5 fonts
differ between vendors (Microsoft/Dynalab vs. Arphic), although they are
for the same locale (Taiwan) and are the same style (the serifed Ming).
[1] http://deall.ohio-state.edu/grads/chan.200/cjkv/u76f4/
Furthermore, I see there is a tendency for PRC font vendors to create
fonts with completely wrong glyphs. i.e., the codepoint for the
"simplified" form is populated with the glyph for the "traditional" form
(simplified and traditional not being unified, remember). The idea is
apparently so that a user can type in Simplified Chinese, and then produce
a Traditional Chinese document by simply (and erroneously) changing the
font. While none of these sorts of fonts are encountered here, they do
exist out there, and would contaminate any font-based studies.
Thomas Chan
tc31@cornell.edu
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.2 : Sat Dec 22 2001 - 13:40:05 EST