On Thu, 21 Mar 2002, Dan Kogai wrote: > The problem is you can't make text/plain to go that way with Unicode > because of Character Unification. So far you have to resort to markups
Heard of (dreaded) plane 14? > and that is the reason I am objecting to Character Unification. Which one of 30 plus characters for 'Wata' in 'Watanabe' should we use for 'Japanese proper' when the character pops up in a context other than personal names if all of them are given distinct code points? The one standardized by Japanese MoE (now MoES)? It seems to me that the effort by MoE to boost the literacy rate in Japan after WW II by standardizing Kanji significantly cut down the tolerance margin of Japanese people when it comes to recognizing Kanjis. Before WW II, I'm almost sure that what are considered now as _non-Japanese_ glyph variants were pretty widely used in Japan before WW II as is still the case in Korea (and perhaps Taiwan and Hongkong). Another question: Are you for giving distinct code points to CJK ideographs rendered in different calligraphic styles? Often times, a single character rendered in two different calligraphic styles is very different in shape (much more different than 'Wata' variants are from each other) to the extent that ordinary people not familiar with a given calligraphic style cannot recognize it at all. This is akin to giving Latin alphabets in Fraktur separate code points. Finally, you may have a second thought about your objection against Han unification if you browse CJK Ideograph tables in ISO 10646-1:2000. Both CD-ROM and paper versions are reasonably priced (which is rare for ISO standards) at 80 CHF and can be ordered at http://www.iso.ch Incidentally, to my pleasant surprise, the price for ISO 10646-2:2001 seems to have been made in line with that for part 1 and is now available for 80 CHF (it used be priced at an usual -astronomical- ISO rate ;-) ) Jungshik Shin
