RE: Solutions to unify middle dot usage in Traditional Chinese

Addison,

Using U+FF0E as a middle dot is a Very Bad Idea™, because it is a full-width full stop (period) that happens to be centered according to Traditional Chinese conventions.

U+30FB is also not good due to its heavy Japanese connections.

Regards...

-- Ken

-----Original Message-----
From: Phillips, Addison [addison@lab126.com]
Received: Wednesday, 10 Dec 2014, 9:57
To: Bobby Tung [bobbytung@wanderer.tw]; public-zhreq@w3.org [public-zhreq@w3.org]
CC: CJK discussion [public-i18n-cjk@w3.org]; 中文HTML5同樂會ML [public-html-ig-zh@w3.org]; Ken Lunde [lunde@adobe.com]
Subject: RE: Solutions to unify middle dot usage in Traditional Chinese

Hi Bobby,

I would think that U+30FB would never be appropriate as a middle dot in Chinese (even though it is sometimes used, possibly because legacy fonts display it in a more graceful manner than the Latin or full width dots).

I tend to agree about using U+00B7 as middle dot with Traditional Chinese text presenting it as full width in most contexts. What you don’t mention is whether Simplified Chinese prefers U+00B7 to be halfwidth. Certainly most Latin script fonts will have U+00B7 as proportional (and thus not full width). That makes the text layout of undifferentiated Hanzi text complicated (don’t know which presentation of middle dot to use).

What is the allergy to using FF0E?

Addison

From: Bobby Tung [mailto:bobbytung@wanderer.tw]
Sent: Wednesday, December 10, 2014 6:23 AM
To: public-zhreq@w3.org
Cc: CJK discussion; 中文HTML5同樂會ML; Ken Lunde
Subject: Solutions to unify middle dot usage in Traditional Chinese

Hello,

There's a problem I found about the middle dot usage in Traditional Chinese.

--Usage

Middle dot for Traditional Chinese has 3 usages list below:

1, separates translated latin name in Hanzi, e.g. 理??石田

2, as decimal point in Hanzi e.g. 三?一四

3, separates book, chapter, title e.g.  詩經?魏風?碩鼠

In Traditional Chinese, the Middle dot should be full-width and a filled round dot in the middle.

--Codepoint

There's some codepoints general used for the middle dot in Traditional Chinese.

·         U+00B7          MIDDLE DOT
?        U+2027           HYPHENATION POINT
?      U+30FB          KATAKANA MIDDLE DOT
．      U+FF0E          FULLWIDTH FULL STOP

And in Simplified Chinese usage, the middle dot is U+00B7.

U+00B7 from A150 and U+2027 from A145 on BIG 5 code table[1].

But I think U+00B7's definition more suitable for the middle dot than U+2027 / U+FF0E.

--Solutions

Considering about interoperability and codepoint definition, I have 2 proposals.

1. use U+00B7 as general middle dot, if authors want to let it full-width, use U+30FB. But most Chinese fonts do not have the glyph, certainly fallback to Japanese font. [2]

2. use U+00B7 as general middle dot, and in Traditional Chinese subset, let glyph be full-width.


=====


各位，我發現繁體字的中點在使用上相當混亂，想藉寫中文排版需求時把標準訂下來，提出兩個方案。

先提出繁體字「連接號」（舊稱音節號）使用的狀況：

1, 用來分隔漢譯姓與名，例如：理??石田

2, 作?漢字數字的小數點，例如：三?一四

3, 用來分隔書、章、作品名，例如：詩經?魏風?碩鼠

而在繁體字的用法上，連接號應該?全形/全角，?置中的實心點。

再來從實際的文件上，會發現有最常使用的四個Codepoints：

·         U+00B7          MIDDLE DOT
?        U+2027           HYPHENATION POINT
?      U+30FB          KATAKANA MIDDLE DOT
．      U+FF0E          FULLWIDTH FULL STOP

簡體字則是統一使用U+00B7，而U+00B7來自BIG 5的A150，但我認?U+00B7的定義比較符合使用狀況，所以不考慮使用U+2027與U+FF0E。

所以提出的方案如下：

1, 使用U+00B7作?標準中點，若作者想要全形，則使用U+30FB，但因?這個Codepoint許多中文字型沒有造，所以幾乎一定會Fallback到日文字型。

2, 使用U+00B7作?標準中點，但在繁體字字型中，將其造?全形。


[1]: http://www.khngai.com/chinese/charmap/tblbig.php?page=0

[2]: http://www.unicode.org/reports/tr11/



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