Re: CJK character lookup

From: John H. Jenkins (jenkins@apple.com)
Date: Fri Jul 19 2002 - 11:21:08 EDT


On Friday, July 19, 2002, at 02:50 AM, Zhang Weiwu wrote:

> I believe someone must have questioned about this, but i don't know how to
> search old messages.
>
> I have problem looking for characters in CJK Extension. I want to find
> code
> for a character made of 巧 above 言.

IOW <U+2FF1><U+5DE7><U+8A00> (that is, ⿱巧巧言). (Ideographic Description
Sequences to the rescue!)

This certainly looks like U+46D2 to me (䛒). How does that differ from
your description?

> This character has the same meaning as
> 辩. I spend this whole morning reading CJK Extension A chartmap. I can't
> find it there. The chartmap is arranged by some order that I cannot guess
> out. I thought it is ordered by the number of strokes of its radical but
> I'm
> wrong (partly it is).

It's arranged via the four-dictionary algorithm, which is described in
chapter 10 of TUS. What this amounts to is the order of the characters in
the KangXi dictionary, either where the character actually is in the
KangXi, or where it would be in the KangXi if the KangXi editors had
included it.

>
> I don't know if this character is in another chartmap.
>
> Who please tell me how to find a character in chartmap quickly?
>

Full radical-stroke charts for Unihan are at
<http://www.unicode.org/charts/Unihan3.2.pdf>. They're about 18 Mb in
size.

Alternatively, you can use the lookup facility in the on-line Unihan
database. Go to <http://www.unicode.org/charts/unihan.html>. If you go
specifically to <http://www.unicode.org/cgi-bin/GetUnihanData.pl?codepoint=
46D2&useutf8=false>, you'll find that U+46D2 is pronounced bin6 in
Cantonese and bian4 in Mandarin and is defined as "(standard form of 辩) to
argue; to dispute; to discuss; to explain". I really think it's the
character you're after.

==========
John H. Jenkins
jenkins@apple.com
jenkins@mac.com
http://homepage.mac.com/jenkins/



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