RE: (off-topic and rambling) Subset of Unicode to represent

From: Edward Cherlin (edward.cherlin.sy.67@aya.yale.edu)
Date: Sat Jul 22 2000 - 01:39:51 EDT


At 4:31 AM -0800 7/17/2000, michael.w.martin1@kodak.com wrote:
>From: MICHAEL W. MARTIN
>
> >> Actually, we're off making wild assumptions about the nature of
>Michael's
> >> problems with no data to work with...
>
>Sorry about that... it was not my intention to keep you in the dark. =)
>
>The project I'm working on must support Japanese, but in a very limited way
>-- most of the time only a "label" of some sort (date, time, a department,

Yes, no problem...

>someone's name, etc).

Oh dear. That's several thousand characters right there, including
some rare and strange ones that are *only* used in personal names.
Quite a while ago the Japanese government tried to require the use of
characters from the then-current standards in newly-registered
personal names, but more or less gave up the fight later on. It is
possible to render some of the really rare characters in katakana,
but then you *must* ask the bearer of the name what the pronunciation
is.

>I must decide what minimal subset of Unicode will be
>needed to "adequately" support several languages, one of which of course,
>is Japanese. The meaning of "adequate" in my situation is somewhat fuzzy.

Especially for Japanese personal names, evidently.

>I want to thank everyone who has contributed to this thread and provided
>explanation and insight!
>
>Mike

At this point, I would suggest that you try to find a CD-ROM phone
listing for all of Japan. You would need to extract all of the names,
then sort and remove duplicates. Unless some researcher has already
done it and posted the file on the Net.

Edward Cherlin
Generalist
"A knot!" exclaimed Alice. "Oh, do let me help to undo it."
Alice in Wonderland



This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.2 : Tue Jul 10 2001 - 17:21:06 EDT