Re: Unicode, Cure-all or Kill-all?

From: Timothy Huang (timd_huang@mail.formac.com.tw)
Date: Sat Aug 10 1996 - 21:34:24 EDT


Glenn Adams wrote:
>
> At 9:52 AM 8/10/96, Timothy Huang wrote:
> >(By the way, I have a copy of
> >the dictionary from China which contains 56,000+ characters.)
>
> So do I, along with the Hanyu DaZidian and many others.
>
> >When the Unicoder Savior will let the Chinese people have 'enough'
> >characters to use?
>
> What is this "let" stuff? Unicode doesn't "let this" and "not let that".
> Unicode members take votes, ISO WGs, SCs and NBs take votes, etc.
>
> Progress takes time. The current state of CJK ideographic writing didn't
> arrive in one day; it took a few thousand years. Do you expect to
> codify that in one brazen step? Come on, get real. If you are impatient
> or dissatisfied with the pace of progress in extending the CJK Ideograph
> repertoire in Unicode/10646, why don't you participate in the WG2/IRG?
>
> >and when the system software companies will implement that?
>
> Perhaps when enough people make it worthwhile. Software companies are
> not academic research institutes nor philanthropic societies.
>
> >I dare NOT to represent 1 billion Chinese people, but just myself. As a
> >Chinese computer user, which you are NOT..
>
> Ni zenme zhidao? Wo xiang ni buzhidao. Wo tiantian yong zhongwen diannao.
>
> >I'm fed up with the current situation.
>
> Then do something about it:, roll up your sleeves and join the IRG.
> There you'll have a chance to prove whether you can contribute or
> whether you can merely make small noises. If you are unfamiliar with
> the TCA representatives to the IRG, I can provide you and introduction.
>
> Regards
> Glenn Adams

Dear Glenn,

Thanks for your reply. That makes me to think a great deal.

I think the real situation is much more complicated than what you think
and understand, at least from my understanding and experiences here in
Taiwan and mainland China. For example, you told me to talk to TCA. They
are just at the corner from my house. Do you know some facts about this
organization? Do you know their relationship with the Institute for
Information Industry (III)? and Do you know what's the background of
III? Perhaps, the name of Mr. Kao, Tein-ju should ring a bell to you.
Mr. Kao is the person who betrayed the Chinese culture in the Big-5
project (1984). He pirated the JIS characters into Big-5. You see, the
Japanese borrowed the characters from China about 1,000 years ago.
However, Mr. Kao pirated our own characters back from Japan. What this
means to our national dignity? Mr. Kao does not even know how many
radicals in KangShi Dictionary. If, the puppet organizations, such as
III and TCA are competent, they won't screw up the coding so bad.

Regarding to joining the organizations/meetings, etc. My question is
this -- Who will pay my trip and bills? You are very lucky to have your
company to pay for everything, but I have to pay for everything myself,
and I just don't have that kind of luxiously now. One other thing, III
warned and banned all computer magazines in Taiwan NOT to publish my
article. They are blocking the way I can make a living, and you think
they will invite me to join them? Wake up to the political reality, my
friend, Mr. Glenn Adams.

So, like the "gang of four" of the Chinese Character Analysis Group, we
work on the Chinese computing where we can privately. During the past
almost 20 years, in the field of Chinese computing, I wrote several
books: An Introduction to Chinese, Japanese and Korean Computing (1989,
in English), Chinese Character Coding (1990, 1992, in Chinese), An
Introduction to Chinese, Japanese and Korean Computing (1990-92, in a
series of Chinese articles), Chinese Phonetics (1995), and Glossary for
Chinese Computer Font Making (to be done by the end of 1996), and I
manage to write for a relative small computer magazine every month. If I
count how many Chinese characters I already wrote and personally
keyed-in, the number is well beyond 3,000,000! That is more than 3,000
pages if each page contains 1,000 characters. You see, Mr. Glenn Adams,
I never stop "doing something about it". If you can help in any way,
politically and financially in particular, I'll be more than happy to
"do something" more within my power.

Smiles,
Timothy Huang



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