Thomas Chan wrote:
> > For that matter, can you invent a Kanji on the fly that cannot be
> > represented (perhaps in a rather cumbersome way) with Ideographic
> > Description Characters?
>
> Yes, it's possible but uncommon. Unlike some other character description
> schemes, IDS can only form characters by composition. e.g., there's no
> way to gut out everything except the right half of U+8BD1 (yi4 'to
> translate') and use the former right half as a component in describing
> another character (as of Unicode 2.1--I haven't checked later versions.)
*ding ding ding* You're in luck, then. U+20B24 is the standalone version
of the right half of U+8BD1.
> Such a component would need to be separately encoded for it to participate
> in an IDS. Sometimes such components are not independent characters, or
> they are rare independent characters that have been overlooked for
> encoding.
Actually, I'm fully expecting China to eventually come into the IRG
with a list of "missing" components to pad out the IDS scheme. So most
of these will be directly representable at some point.
Otherwise, I agree with Thomas' assertion that the IDS scheme is not
not really aimed at the relatively nonproductive instances of
character creation by stroke deletion, rotation, ligaturing and
kai-formation from seal or other ancient character forms. But then
modern Chinese speakers don't tend to use such techniques to name
racehorses. ;-)
--Ken
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.2 : Wed Mar 27 2002 - 14:35:27 EST