Shawn:
I'm a reader of a Unicode mailing list, and your query was passed to us for
a response.
At Friday, October 27, 2000 2:50 PM, you wrote to [EMAIL PROTECTED]:
>Can Japanese be effectively represented with only the Hiragana, and Katakana
>scripts?
Effectively, no. Strictly speaking, you can represent Japanese text with
just hiragana or just katakana, but the resulting text is very difficult to
read. The use of kanji, and the alternation between kanji, hiragana, and
katakana, provide a great deal of information, and loss of that text really
makes comprehension harder.
Imagine English text without spaces and letter case, and you'll have an
idea what it's like.
IMAGINEENGLISHTEXTWITHOUTSPACESANDLETTERCASE,ANDYOULLHAVEANIDEAWHATITSLIKE.
People can tolerate katakana messages spelling names on credit cards, or on
the one-line displays of electronic equipment, or in telegrams, but even
these technologies are including kanji display as soon as the technology
permits.
Hope this helps,
--Jim DeLaHunt, Engineering Manager
Adobe Type Library, Adobe Systems Incorporated
M/S W-08, 345 Park Ave, San Jose, CA 95110-2702
email: [EMAIL PROTECTED], tel: +1-408-536-2690
