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 [EMAIL PROTECTED]
