Thomas Chan wrote: > > For that matter, can you invent a Kanji on the fly that cannot be > > represented (perhaps in a rather cumbersome way) with Ideographic > > Description Characters? > > Yes, it's possible but uncommon. Unlike some other character description > schemes, IDS can only form characters by composition. e.g., there's no > way to gut out everything except the right half of U+8BD1 (yi4 'to > translate') and use the former right half as a component in describing > another character (as of Unicode 2.1--I haven't checked later versions.)
*ding ding ding* You're in luck, then. U+20B24 is the standalone version of the right half of U+8BD1. > Such a component would need to be separately encoded for it to participate > in an IDS. Sometimes such components are not independent characters, or > they are rare independent characters that have been overlooked for > encoding. Actually, I'm fully expecting China to eventually come into the IRG with a list of "missing" components to pad out the IDS scheme. So most of these will be directly representable at some point. Otherwise, I agree with Thomas' assertion that the IDS scheme is not not really aimed at the relatively nonproductive instances of character creation by stroke deletion, rotation, ligaturing and kai-formation from seal or other ancient character forms. But then modern Chinese speakers don't tend to use such techniques to name racehorses. ;-) --Ken
