Calendars (was: Re: Vertical scripts)
> Oh, no. We use three calendars in Iran: Jalali, Hijri, and Gregorian. The > official one is Jalali, for some holidays we use Hijri dates, and we use > Gregorian just for international occasions like the Internation Workers' > Day. I can't help but wonder how they would show that on a digital watch!! Just month / day, with both month and day being shown by digits, and the first day of the year being 1 / 1 ? > > roozbeh > > > -- ___ Get your free email from http://www.ranmamail.com Powered by Outblaze
Font problem with Japanese period
A few hours ago, Frank Tang gave us a link. It led us to a page about a display bug in Netscape. This bug causes the Japanese period to sometimes display incorrectly. 1) Momoi-san, just between you and me, I've seen better-looking kana on my Game Boy. 2) Your problem with the ugly kana is not unique: I have some kind of Arial Unicode font where the kana give you the unshakable impression that they were designed by someone who never took a good look at Japanese text. Try writing "raishuu" in hiragana with this font to see what I mean. 3) Your bad period would probably work very well in tategaki. It looks to be in the right place for that. I think what you have is a font display problem. Does the same problem occur with other fonts? Besides all this, I have seen in Windows 3.1 a special font called "Small fonts". It was a set of bitmap fonts for small display sizes. I think one of these is necessary for Japanese. And as for the kana, just look at any old Game Boy game to see the tricks they use for legibility, such as writing dakuten as two vertical (not diagonal!) strokes to distinguish them from handakuten. What we need for the period is at least 3 glyphs: Japanese tategaki, Japanese yokogaki, and Chinese. (Do the Chinese put their period on the line? Once I read a bilingual Chinese/English magazine, which had Chinese text I could refer to for this, but it's been ages since I last saw it.) While we're at it, the bar (as in "raamen" and "meeru") needs 2 glyphs. -- ___ Get your free email from http://www.ranmamail.com Powered by Outblaze
Re: Updated Compelling Unicode Demo
In Netscape 6, the demo apparently does not support appropriate directionality for Hebrew and Arabic characters. Please check this out. Also, when will we have a stylesheet code for tategaki? They should not use "ideographic" in the name for tategaki, as tategaki is used often without ideographs (it is used for the numbers on American mileposts, for one). Tategaki is also used for kana calligraphy, not one "ideograph" in there! There should be a "tategaki-ltr" and a "tategaki-rtl", depending on which line of characters is read first. Which way is Mongolian? > I have updated: > http://www.geocities.com/i18nguy/unicode-example.html > > Persian and Yiddish have been added and Armenian has changed. > -- ___ Get your free email from http://www.ranmamail.com Powered by Outblaze
Dead links in an i18n example
I think these links are dead. (e.g. < http://www.xfree86.org/pipermail/i18n/2001-October/002526.html>, > or < http://www.xfree86.org/pipermail/i18n/2001-November/002639.html> -- ___ Get your free email from http://www.ranmamail.com Powered by Outblaze
"Onna" (woman) kanji
In that big long list of characters than have different glyphs in Chinese and Japanese, the character "onna" (woman) was listed as one of them. I will not name the codepoint because surely you know which one I mean. How is this? Also, a couple of digits (I think 7 and 8) were listed as having different glyphs. This is probably trivial. If anyone wants real world examples, I have RIGHT HERE a Love Hina manga. If we want to talk glyphs, let's not just talk computer fonts; let's also talk what we see. Note: This is printed in Japan. If you talk glyphs from, like, CDs, those can be produced anywhere and therefore don't count. Okay. Han digit eight (not its Unicode name). If you mean roof vs no roof, my printed-in-Japan manga has an 8 with the right-hand stroke starting off by forming a little "roof". (Look on page 190, as part of the number "112-8001".) Woman. Considering the subject material of the manga, that should be no problem... The 3rd stroke passes through the exact top of the 2nd stroke, but I think that if I looked at another book I might see different... -- ___ Get your free email from http://www.ranmamail.com Powered by Outblaze
Character display problem example
Suzanne Topping recently posted a query about what Han characters cause display problems when a Chinese font is used to display Japanese or such. I think that there is a certain 5-stroke character that will answer it. It is U+5E73. Japanese version: - | \ | / \ | / | -+- | | | Do you agree? -- ___ Get your free email from http://www.ranmamail.com Powered by Outblaze
Re: OT: Chocolate Letters
I want two chocolate hangul syllables, "ri", and "sa", for my Korean-American friend. What do you call "one-piece" characters (like hiragana "a") to distinguish them from "multi-piece" ones (like hiragana "ta")? To give a more familiar example, the only multi-piece Greek capital letters are xi and perhaps theta. I know, you call them nothing. This is so you don't have disputes about whether you must remove the engraving tool when carving your girlfriend Sakura's initial. -Original Message- From: "James Kass" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Date: Fri, 7 Dec 2001 11:51:50 -0800 To: "Becker, Joseph" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, "Michael Everson" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Re: OT: Chocolate Letters > > Joseph Becker wrote, > > > > > I received my chocolate "B" from my Dutch co-worker two days ago, 5 > > December. He apologized that the store had run out of "J"'s ... but of > > course "B"'s contain a lot more chocolate! I'm trying to teach him my > > Chinese name ... > > Well, it depends on how you make your "J"s. > > Seriously (and still OT), how much more chocolate is there in > a 65 gram "B" than in a 65 gram "J"? > > Best regards, > > James Kass. > > > -- ___ Get your free email from http://www.ranmamail.com Powered by Outblaze
Re: Suggestions for next print edition
> You can always search the big Unihan.txt file on the kJapaneseKun > and kJapaneseOn fields, which provide whatever information we have > on pronunciation of the characters in Japanese. > > If you are just stuck looking up stuff because it isn't marked up > for Japanese, try getting Sanseido's Unicode Kanji > Information Dictionary, which has the first 20,902 kanji in Unicode > (the most useful set) all marked up with all the Japanese pronunciations > (where they have any). The first suggestion is useless. The file is too freaking big so maybe I'll go with the second. Thanks. -- ___ Get your free email from http://www.ranmamail.com Powered by Outblaze
Re: Are these characters encoded?
Perhaps they should be. I wonder: When transcribing a foreign name (like a business name) that includes the ampersand, would a Swede use the "och" sign? I can't answer that. In other words, does there exist a case where the ampersand and the "och" sign are not interchangeable? -Original Message- From: John Hudson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Date: Sun, 02 Dec 2001 16:33:04 -0800 To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: Are these characters encoded? > At 15:16 12/2/2001, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > > >Then why not unify DIGIT THREE with HAN DIGIT THREE? > > I don't know enough about the Han encoding to answer that. Because they are > distinguished in existing character sets? Because someone has a need to > distinguish them in plain text? > > I'm not saying that the Swedish och sign should automatically be unified > with the ampersand. I'm simply pointing out that, as described to date on > this list, it is not clear that this sign needs to be separately encoded. > We know that is can be treated as a language-specific glyph variant because > Swedish readers apparently accept both forms to means exactly the same > thing. Whether such treatment is sufficient depends on whether there is > also need to distinguish the two forms, and to do so in plain text. I think > Michael Everson made a strong case for separate encoding of the Tironian et > sign, and I think a similarly strong case would need to be made for > separately encoding the Swedish och sign. > > I'm perfectly happy to include the och sign in my fonts, whether it is > encoded or not, and to provide mechanisms to access the glyph. At the > moment, though, I don't think it is clear whether it is best for this sign > to be encoded or not. What might be the impact on Swedish keyboard drivers? > Is the intention that a new och sign character should replace the ampersand > character in Swedish text processing, or should both be used? What is the > impact on existing documents? > > John Hudson > > Tiro Typeworkswww.tiro.com > Vancouver, BC [EMAIL PROTECTED] > > ... es ist ein unwiederbringliches Bild der Vergangenheit, > das mit jeder Gegenwart zu verschwinden droht, die sich > nicht in ihm gemeint erkannte. > > ... every image of the past that is not recognized by the > present as one of its own concerns threatens to disappear > irretrievably. >Walter Benjamin > > > -- ___ Get your free email from http://www.ranmamail.com Powered by Outblaze
Re: Are these characters encoded?
Then why not unify DIGIT THREE with HAN DIGIT THREE? -Original Message- From: John Hudson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Date: Sun, 02 Dec 2001 10:05:36 -0800 To: Michael Everson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Re: Are these characters encoded? > At 14:14 12/1/2001, Michael Everson wrote: > > >It is certainly not a glyph variant of an ampersand. An ampersand is a > >ligature of e and t. This is certainly an abbreviation of och. That both > >mean "and" is NOT a reason for unifying different signs. > > The fact that & is accepted by Swedish readers as a substitute for the > 'och' sign, and that the latter seems to be limited to manuscript, suggests > a glyph variant. I do not consider the fact that both mean 'and' to be a > reason for unifying different signs. I ponder whether two different signs > that are apparently used *interchangeably* might be unified? > > John Hudson > > Tiro Typeworkswww.tiro.com > Vancouver, BC [EMAIL PROTECTED] > > ... es ist ein unwiederbringliches Bild der Vergangenheit, > das mit jeder Gegenwart zu verschwinden droht, die sich > nicht in ihm gemeint erkannte. > > ... every image of the past that is not recognized by the > present as one of its own concerns threatens to disappear > irretrievably. >Walter Benjamin > > > -- ___ Get your free email from http://www.ranmamail.com Powered by Outblaze
Suggestions for next print edition
1. Unicode points are NUMBERS. Numbers can be written in ANY base. Knowing decimal values of codepoints is sometimes useful, so please print them in the next edition of the Unicode book. 2. There was a Shift-JIS index for kanji. I don't know much about kanji, but it seems to me that they are arranged in a-i-u-e-o order of on'yomi. Why not print little hiragana letters at the top to aid people searching for a kanji? Remember how I could not find the "ran" of "randamu" before? Let's see this time... Aha! There is is! I know it was somewhere between "mo(kuyoubi)" and "(fu)ro". Better than stroke / radical, I wonder? * Disclaimer: From what I hear, the Japanese do NOT write "randamu" as U+4E71 U+3060 U+3080. They use U+30E9 U+30F3 U+30C0 U+30E0. But the first is cuter. ^_^ -- ___ Get your free email from http://www.ranmamail.com Powered by Outblaze
C with bar for "with"
Someone said that in English, c-with-underbar means "with". My mom writes this as c-with-overline. -- ___ Get your free email from http://www.ranmamail.com Powered by Outblaze
Re: Comments on FCD 5218, "Codes for the representation ofhuman sexes"
You already have Unicode codes for the representation of human sexes. Men: U+7537 or U+2642 Women: U+5973 or U+2640 Isn't this enough? ^_^ Oh by the way, I remember a Japanese lady showed me that "kaku" (the counter for strokes of a written character) is... lemme see... U+753B. Unicode 3.0 has it as U+756B. -- ___ Get your free email from http://www.ranmamail.com Powered by Outblaze
Re: Planning a "Unicode Only" Week
I think maybe that encoding (on the Internet) does not much matter. As long as my browser knows that it is looking at Unicode, it knows which, say, SJIS, character to look up in the font to display. Must have table lookup or something. -Original Message- From: Daniel Yacob <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Date: Wed, 28 Nov 2001 17:03:11 -0500 To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Planning a "Unicode Only" Week > Greetings, > > A number of the Ethiopian language news services have tentatively planned > for a "Unicode Only" week during the first week of January. Service in all > other encoding systems would be suspended during the week. The intention > is to give users a gentle push to download and install a Unicode font. Users > will be warned weeks ahead of time of the impending legacy encoding outage. > > The choice of the first week of January was mostly arbitrary. If other web > sites would like to join us for a larger "Unicode Only" week please contact > me offline. We could reschedule to coincide with the week of IUC-20 if there > is enough interest. > > cheers, > > /Daniel > > -- ___ Get your free email from http://www.ranmamail.com Powered by Outblaze
What is meant by '\u0000'?
> As for cut & paste, it might work among Microsoft Apps > but if one wants to interface an app with a disclosed > clipboard format he will realize that he can not paste > unicode text that contains '\u' characters. Impossible. Does he mean specifically the character U+, or rather any character referenced by hex codepoint? Hex codepoints (or something similar) are sometimes needed to keep ASCII-only systems from trashing your data. I have used them so much I took my copy of the Unicode standard and on the hiragana page, wrote some decimal equivalents of hex numbers there. Hex codepoints are an excellent idea when making a display that is to be shown on browsers set to who knows what codepage. Tex, how did you do the name page, anyway? It would be useful to have a utility where you type text and out come the '\u' type strings (or else HTML hash codes) for use in a Java program or Web page. -- ___ Get your free email from http://www.ranmamail.com Powered by Outblaze
Why have planes?
Why not store codepoint numbers as bignums? -- ___ Get your free email from http://www.ranmamail.com Powered by Outblaze
romajiToKana function
I have before referred to a "romajiToKana" function, not knowing whether or not it existed. it seems it does exist. Is there JavaScript for it? If not, if I have the time, inclination, and ability, I will write one. -- ___ Get your free email from http://www.ranmamail.com Powered by Outblaze
