From: Tex Texin (tex@i18nguy.com)
Date: Tue Jul 08 2003 - 01:54:15 EDT
Allen,
Thanks for this. Good points. The ideographic description approach is also a
good idea.
The table of Japanese counting characters was a bit off-topic for the
multicurrency page, and the footnotes that are there now for the Jo/Shi
character are a further distraction, but seem adequate enough. (Moreso,
considering how often anyone uses 10**24.) Some day in the future I'll do a
separate more in-depth page around this and include the IDC approach.
tex
Allen Haaheim wrote:
>
> Hi,
> Any similarity between U+5b50 子 at 3 strokes, and U+4e88 予 at 4, is
> superficial. For example, U+2007 迺 is a common variant for 4e43 乃 ("is,"
> "then") but can't be confused 逎 900e ("alcoholic beverage"). (Context
> usually makes that clear pretty quickly!) Since 79ed and 25771 seem to be
> both interchangeable for your purpose, as well as both still in fairly
> common use, I agree a note would be a good idea.
>
> (Someone correct me please, if the following method should not be used for
> Japanese--I'm sure it is fine with Chinese.) If you can't get 25771 to work,
> for the note you might consider using a certain "Ideographic Description
> Character," namely U+2FF0 ⿰, which indicates that the two characters to
> follow
> are meant to represent the two left/right components of the originally
> desired character.
> Otherwise you will simply have two incorrect graphs (79be 禾 and 4e88 予),
> even if what you really
> mean is obvious enough. E.g., something like "Also written as⿰禾予."
>
> There is an explanation in English here (bottom of page):
> http://deall.ohio-state.edu/grads/chan.200/cjkv/elevator.html
>
> Allen
>
> When you raise chickens, you let them eat what they want,
> As soon as they fatten, you boil them in a pot.
> This plan is the best for the man who owns them,
> But for heaven's sake, don't let the chickens know!
>
> Yüan Mei (1776), trans. J.D. Schmidt
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Tex Texin" <tex@i18nguy.com>
> To: "Ben Monroe" <bendono@comcast.net>
> Cc: <unicode@unicode.org>
> Sent: Sunday, July 06, 2003 6:51 PM
> Subject: Re: The character for 10**24 in Japanese numbers (jo)
>
> Thanks very much Ben.
>
> The radical I see used on several web pages corresponds to either U+4E88 or
> U+5B50 (child), they are very similar.
> If you look at the Unicode charts, the character 79ED has a radical on the
> right which doesn't look like the child character at all (to me).
> http://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/U4E00.pdf
>
> For ext. B, the character James suggested U+25771 also has the child
> radical.
> However, the other two U+25797, U+25791 do not.
> http://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/U20000.pdf
>
> If you look at the charts you can see what I am referring to.
>
> The character is often represented by two characters as I did on my page or
> as
> a glyph image. Very often it is not displayed at all, and is skipped in
> lists
> of these characters used for numbers. That's why I am kind of stuck not
> wanting to recommend a single JIS-based character, if they have been
> rejected
> by many users, and also not wanting to lead in a new direction, unless there
> is a preponderance of agreement it is the right thing to do. It might be
> best
> to continue with the two-character or glyph approach.
>
> I agree that this number is not going to be used a lot and therefore it may
> not bear a great investment in sweating over which character(s) to use, but
> on
> the other hand I like to make my pages accurate with reasonable
> recommendations.
>
> I was hoping Unicode 4.0 would have a clear solution to the problem, and if
> the character U+25771 were in the BMP, and if font vendors told me they were
> going to support it reasonably soon, then it seems to me to be the right
> thing
> to recommend (with a caution perhaps) going forward. Given it is part of
> Ext.
> B, support seems far away at best and therefore not a good recommendation.
>
> At this point, I probably should footnote the character and provide the
> suggestions you have documented (which I appreciate!). Before I do, let me
> know what you think of the glyphs in the Unicode charts, to make sure that
> the
> rightside radicals there, are something you would agree are reasonable
> alternatives to child. They look nothing like U+4E88 or U+5B50.
>
> I am hoping this won't take 1 jo/shi of emails to straighten out!
>
> BTW, I should mention my knowledge around Kanji is next to nil and my
> sources
> were mostly other web pages I searched out, so this purely a layman's effort
> on my part and given the accuracy of the web, I will change positions
> easily.
>
> tex
>
> Ben Monroe wrote:
> >
> > [UTF-8]
> >
> > Tex Texin wrote:
> >
> > > On shi/jo the glyph I see in Windows charmap doesn't look
> > > right. Perhaps it is my particular set of fonts. I expect to
> > > see a radical on the right that looks like the character for
> > > child, and charmap shows something else. I'll wait to see if
> > > someone else chimes in pro or con.
> >
> > The right side of the character probably has U+4E88 äº^ instead of U+5B50
> å (child). These two characters are different. As I mentioned before,
> there are several different glyphs used to write shi/jo.
> > Several of the forms are U+79ED ç§, U+25797 ð¥z-, U+25791 ð¥z', and
> U+25771 ð¥±.
> > These all express the value of 10^24 and are read as shi or jo, depending
> on your source.
> >
> > > Also, I wonder what the correct thing to recommend would be?
> > > Assuming surrogate support was consistently available, and
> > > fonts were available containing this character (are there any
> > > today?), since the character was not generally being written
> > > as a single character until now (and I am still not sure if the
> > > pair U+79BE U+4E88 is the correct alternative), would it be
> > > right to recommend this for people to use in number writing
> > > going forward? I tend to think of Ext. B as there for historic
> > > and special characters, not those that might be used every day.
> >
> > If you are worried about surrogate support and font availability, then
> U+79ED may be the best, which is attested and documented, and listed in
> modern dictionaries. Both Koujien and Daijirin (available online at
> http://dictionary.goo.ne.jp/index.html?kind=jn&mode=0se this glyph for
> it's entry of "shi". Otherwise, go for U+25771, which seems to be attested
> the most in documents. Daijirin uses this glyph for it's entry of "jo", but
> Koujien does not list it.
> >
> > However, these are not really "every day" characters, at least in my
> experience. Most people will know "chou", some will know "kei", fewer will
> know "gai", and even fewer will know "shi/jo". I would be a little surprised
> if many people could list the rest off the top of their head without prior
> special study or other references.
> >
> > Ben Monroe
> > [For those looking for my original e-mail message that Tex responded to, I
> accidentally sent it under a new address forgetting to update my
> subscription information after my e-mail address changed. (Old one is still
> being forwarded to this one.)]
>
> --
> -------------------------------------------------------------
> Tex Texin cell: +1 781 789 1898 mailto:Tex@XenCraft.com
> Xen Master http://www.i18nGuy.com
>
> XenCraft http://www.XenCraft.com
> Making e-Business Work Around the World
> -------------------------------------------------------------
-- ------------------------------------------------------------- Tex Texin cell: +1 781 789 1898 mailto:Tex@XenCraft.com Xen Master http://www.i18nGuy.com XenCraft http://www.XenCraft.com Making e-Business Work Around the World -------------------------------------------------------------
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