On Jan 10, 2004, at 5:23 AM, Christopher Cullen wrote:
I am an academic with research interests in the history of ancient Chinese mathematics, and I should like to propose the encoding of traditional Chinese rod numerals.
These represent the arrays of "counting rods" on a counting board as used in China for complex calculations before the invention of the abacus. There are eighteen forms in all, representing the numerals one to nine in two forms which are basically versions of each other with a 90 degrees rotation. One form is used for units, the the other for tens, then back to the first form for hundreds, and so on. A zero is represented by a gap in the array. For pictures of these and an explanatory text, see:
http://www.math.sfu.ca/histmath/China/Beginning/Rod.html
These forms appear in pre-modern mathematical books in China, and in modern books discussing ancient mathematics. They are not to be confused with the the related "Hangzhou numerals", which are already encoded at 3021-303a. It would be a great convenience to have these as a standard resource rather than having to create a special private font in order to represent them.
From a private source, I have been told that these forms are neither in any current Unicode encoding initiative, nor indeed anywhere in the proposal pipeline. I should therefore be grateful for any comments or advice that might guide me towards making a formal submission.
Christopher Cullen
======== John H. Jenkins [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://homepage..mac.com/jhjenkins/
