Re: Upside Down Fu character

Thank you again to all for the discussion regarding upside-down fu 福 and now upside-down chun 春

I also think that upside-down fu 福 should not be incorporated into cjk blocks/extensions. To do so could mislead people into thinking it a regular hanzi 汉字. Conceptually it is an Emoji.

I will now write and submit a formal proposal for upside-down fu 福 and maybe upside-down chun 春. I am a newbie to this submission process so it will probably take me a little time. Before submitting I will also be gathering more opinions from the Chinese students at my University.

I will let all know when I have submitted the proposal.

André Schappo

On 13 Jan 2012, at 18:01, Asmus Freytag wrote:

John,

while I can imagine that I'll be perfectly able to live without these particular characters encoded, I disagree with your take on these.

For one, it seems reasonably clear from evidence in the discussion that these characters do not form part of the standard Han writing system, just as © is not part of the Latin alphabet, even though it's clearly derived from that alphabet. Therefore, I think that using UTR#45 to track such characters is not appropriate (even less so, to give them a "W" status from the start).

I believe, a good case can be made that the use of these upside down characters is iconic, not as an element of their writing system. To me, their use seems to have much in common with emoji.

Emoji, if understood not as "that set of phone company Shift-JIS extensions" but more properly as "icons used in text like characters" are a system of their own, and one that is best understood as being equally open ended as any other subset of Unicode characters. All writing systems are subject to growth and change.

If you use a definition of emoji that focuses on their use, rather than on a particular collection of them then I don't think how you can a-priori exclude the identification of these putative characters as potential extensions of the set of emoji.

What I'd suggest is to back off for a moment.

Nobody has written a formal proposal yet.

When that is done, then one of the questions that needs to be decided in initial triage is whether these are elements of the han script proper or iconic symbols that happen to be derived from han characters. (The proposal may suggest a particular resolution of this issue). If, with all facts on the table, the consensus is that they are "regular" han characters, then their further evaluation starts with tracking them under TR#45 and potentially taking them to IRG for possible consideration in extension F.

If not. then the process would be different.

A./



On 1/13/2012 9:24 AM, John H. Jenkins wrote:
Hanzi have a slightly different way of getting into the standard because it's all done through the IRG, which receives submissions from each member body. Submissions from the UTC start by being added to UTR #45. That, however, is merely a database to track potential characters we're aware of. It doesn't mean that the UTC plans to request their encoding. Characters generally start out with a status of X, meaning that no decision has been made.

From everything I've seen so far, my own recommendation would be that the upside-down fu, at least, be given status W (meaning "inappropriate for encoding"). If anybody wants to advocate encoding it, they need to write a document and submit it to the UTC. They would need to either provide evidence of actual use as a text element in plain-text (not as a graphic embedded in plain text—the emoji were a special case), or that it would be "widely" used as such (given a reasonable definition of "widely"). The UTC might well respond by asking for more information. The current submission form is certainly a good template for providing information in a requested hanzi.

Assuming the UTC approves a status of "N" (to be encoded), the character would be included in the UTC's submission to the IRG for Extension F. Work on Extension F will likely start in 2013.

Andre Schappo 於 2012年1月13日 上午8:36 寫道：


On 12 Jan 2012, at 16:54, John H. Jenkins wrote:

Kang-Hao (Kenny) Lu 於 2012年1月12日 上午12:13 寫道：

* Three folks think this is rather unnecessary (including me). Some
people go more and say "What about a code point for XXX and YYY?"

Do they have specific XXXs and YYYs in mind?

In general, the process is outlined at http://www.unicode.org/pending/proposals.html. For hanzi, the characters need to be added to UTR #45 first, but I'm going to propose that for both the upside-down fuk1—er, fu, and the upside-down chun, since they have been discussed. UTR #45 lets us track such discussions.

=====
井作恆
John H. Jenkins
jenkins_at_apple.com<mailto:jenkins_at_apple.com>


I have received a request for an upside-down 钱 (=qián = money = U+94B1).

I have talked with a small number of Chinese students about having an upside-down fu character and they were all enthusiastic. I will be talking with more Chinese students next week which is when the new term starts.

John: As you are progressing upside-down fu and chun characters into UTR #45 does this mean that I no longer need to submit a "Proposal Summary Form" for upside-down fu? I have not yet actually started on said form.

André 小山 Schappo




福福福福福福福福福福福福福
http://weibo.com/andreschappo
http://blog.sina.com.cn/andreschappo
http://twitter.com/andreschappo
http://schappo.blogspot.com/
http://me2day.net/andreschappo

André 小山 Schappo
Dept. Computer Science
Loughborough University
Loughborough
Leics LE11 3TU

01509 222682

Received on Sun Jan 15 2012 - 05:16:36 CST