On Sat, 3 Feb 2001, Markus Kuhn wrote:
> Ienup Sung wrote on 2001-02-03 02:42 UTC:
> > Also, as an example, I placed a TIFF file at the following URL
> > that will display different variations of glyphs for same Unicode code
> > point values. (I started two dtterm terminal emulators, one with ja_JP.UTF-8
> > locale and the other with zh_CN.UTF-8 locale and then did 'more /usr/pub/UTF-8'
> > in both terminal emulators to U+4E00:
>
> An essential reference for everyone interested in the subject:
>
> The ISO 10646-1:2000 standard prints the entire CJK collection in 5
> different ideographic fonts and comes with an appendix that documents
> the principle and rational behind the CJK unification in detail.
One shouldn't rely too heavily on just one source as being authoritative
or prescriptive, especially for people not very familiar with the script,
as there is variation even among fonts in a single locale.
> Available from
> http://www.iso.ch/cate/d29819.html
> in PDF on CD-ROM for just 80 CHF (~45 USD).
I thought there were problems opening some of those PDF files; c.f.
http://anubis.dkuug.dk/jtc1/sc2/wg2/docs/n2296r.htm .
> In my opinion, the CJK unification is something that should already have
> been done much earlier in the 1970s when the first ideographic character
> sets were standardized. Unfortunately, these projects were initiated
There were unfortunately economic and political reasons for that not being
the case. Japan had the technology first; mainland China was going
through or recovering from the chaos of the Cultural Revolution, as well
as being shunned by the majority of the world; mainland China and Taiwan
were at odds (and still are to some degree) because of the Cold War and
ideological differences; North Korea and South Korea separated for similar
reasons, as well as North Korea being shunned (and still are) by the world
community; war in Vietnam and the rest of Indo-China; etc.
Even today, we don't have an ideal situation. North Korea and Vietnam are
just getting involved because they finally have the political and economic
situation to do so, and who knows what kinds of differences in viewpoint
might emerge between North and South Korean practice--already, we know
that the majority of implementations of Korean hangeul[2] follow South
Korean naming, sorting, spelling, encoding, etc practice. Meanwhile, Hong
Kong is just waking up to not making do with using Taiwan's practices.
(And I'm not going to get into speculation of what could happen if Macau
and Singapore decide to do things differently one day.)
I don't think Japan would have been willing to delay 30+ years for the
ideal cooperative environement...
[2] Including Unicode; and here I am guilty myself for using this
oh-so-South-Korean term...
Outside the realm of character set standardization, there were already
"unification"-like practices, such as Chinese-language texts printed in
Japan according to Japanese practices. Or the influential _Kangxi
Zidian_ (1716) dictionary from China that everyone, including Japan[3],
refers back to as a de facto standard. The _Dai Kanwa Jiten_ (aka
Morohashi) dictionary of 1950's Japan that is seen as the definitive work
on the subject in Japan, is really a work on Chinese language and Chinese
things. Etc. I would say that unification had already existed, and what
is happening now is an attempt to repair the divergences that have taken
place.
[3] "Koki Jiten". And now even the IRG.
Thomas Chan
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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Linux-UTF8: i18n of Linux on all levels
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