Re: 3007 IDEOGRAPHIC NUMBER ZERO

From: Jim DeLaHunt (delahunt@Adobe.COM)
Date: Thu Dec 11 1997 - 15:50:28 EST


At 11:01 AM 12/11/97 -0800, Keld J|rn Simonsen wrote:
>A question about U3007 IDEOGRAPHIC NUMBER ZERO: Is this character used
>as a digit, and how wide is this use, if any?

This is Shift-JIS 0x815A and JIS 0x213B, according to JIS0208.txt (from Th
Unicode Standard 2.0). I think that's the Japanese "maru" character.

I've seen this used as the digit "zero" when writing out digits with
Japanese characters. This is different from writing the number as a value,
when the characters for "hundred", "thousands", etc. would also appear.
This is also different from writing the number with full-width or
half-width Roman digits.

"Maru" is also used in tabular information, together with a character
"batsu", which looks like an "X". "Maru" represents "yes", "OK",
"applies"; "batsu" represents "no", "no good", "not applicable". In this
context it's a symbol, not a digit.

At 11:47 AM 12/11/97 -0800, Michael Everson wrote:
...
>One interpretation of what Keld means is this: would use of it and the
>related numbers on a calculator be considered incorrect, or
>strange-but-acceptable, or what?

I imagine this would be considered either incorrect, or really strange.

Disclaimer: I write as a non-fluent user of Japanese as a second language,
am I'm certainly not an expert in Japanese text or Japanese encodings.
This is my amateur opinion. I have not information about the use of this
character in languages other than Japanese.

        --Jim DeLaHunt, OEM Group Project Manager, Pac Rim
          Production Imaging Engineering, Adobe Systems Incorporated
          M/S P-09, 303 Almaden Blvd, San Jose, CA 95110-2702
          email: delahunt@adobe.com, tel: +1-408-536-2690



This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.2 : Tue Jul 10 2001 - 17:20:38 EDT