Re: Rush request for help!

On Fri, 21 Dec 2001, Suzanne M. Topping wrote:

> The two examples I dug out of various ongoing email debates etc. are
> below:
>
> 	The traditional Chinese glyph for "grass" uses four
> 	strokes for the "grass" radical, whereas the simplified Chinese,
> Japanese,
> 	and Korean glyphs use three. But there is only one Unicode point
> for the
> 	grass character (U+8349) regardless of writing system.

  I can't say about Japanese or simp. Chinese, but in Korea
the number of strokes for the 'grass' radical (U+8279) is sometimes three
and other times four. Every Korean with the minimum knowledge of Chinese
characters knows that it can have either four strokes or three strokes.
It's just a matter of taste of font designers, individuals, etc.  However,
four stroke version is more common and I think is considered 'canonical'.
Personally, I always (well, like most other Koreans, I rarely use Chinese
characters with a pen/pencil these days) use four strokes.
(ref. http://211.46.71.249/handic/index.htm)

  I've just found that there are three grass radicals
encoded in CJK Radicals supplement block: U+2EBE, U+2EBF, U+2EBF
in addition to the _full_ form at U+2F8B.


> 	Another example is the ideograph for "one," which is different
> in
> 	Chinese, Japanese, and Korean.

  Did you mean U+58F9 ?


> I have been told that neither of these are valid examples, for various
> reasons.

  I guess so.


> I very much want to include a legitimate example of a character which
> displays using different glyphs in various character sets, and am hoping
> that one of you brilliant people out there can send me one ASAP, so I
> can finish this blasted paper and go home to grab a glass of eggnog.

  I'm sorry I can go to a great length to show why CJK unification is not
so much a problem as some people have tried to make it look
(e.g. <http://www.xfree86.org/pipermail/i18n/2001-October/002526.html>,
 or  <http://www.xfree86.org/pipermail/i18n/2001-November/002639.html>
), it's rather hard to give an example you need.

  One potential candidate is U+76F4 (straight). I can't say that the glyph
given for U+76F4 in TUS 3.0 code chart (on p.677) is familiar
to me (although I have little problem recognizing it) . A few years
ago a Japanese sent me an ASCII rendering (as in TUS 3.0 or 2.0) and
challenged me whether I could recognize it. He cited it as an example of
inappropriate unification of traditional Chinese character and Japanese
Kanji. However, this may not be an valid example, either. If you look it
up at http://140.111.1.40 (Chinese character variant dictionary compiled
under the auspice of MoE of Taiwan), the canonical glyph listed for the
character is the same as the glyph on p. 886 of TUS 3.0 (the radical of
the character meaning 'straight' is the character meaning 'eye' U+76EE
with three additional strokes) which is certainly more familiar to me
and, I believe, to Japanese.  Therefore, his assertion that traditional
Chinese glyph for U+76F4 is different from Japanese counterpart does not
hold up. As Thomas Chan once remarked on this list, Japanese objection to
CJK unification would have been much smaller if more canonical
glyphs (as listed in the aforementioned variant dictionary) have been
used in TUS 3.0 table.

  Jungshik Shin

Received on Friday, 21 December 2001 17:01:03 UTC