I've developped an open-source, multi-platform desktop application called
Unicode Plus <https://github.com/tonton-pixel/unicode-plus>, which is a set of
utilities related to Unicode, Unihan and emoji.
The basic Unihan-related utilities are almost completed, and now I would like
to add more useful information about the Unihan variants:
1. First option: "Linear Information"
- A linear list of all the variants *related* to one given Unihan character
would be displayed, similar to what can be found in Apple's Character Viewer
(or Palette), or in the "Unihan Variant Dictionary" application.
- Two sources of data could be merged:
1. The information provided by the "Variants table for Unicode" data
file UniVariants.txt
<http://kanji.zinbun.kyoto-u.ac.jp/~yasuoka/ftp/CJKtable/UniVariants.Z> by
Prof. KÅichi Yasuoka.
2. The information extracted from the relevant Unihan DB tag
properties: kSemanticVariant, kSimplifiedVariant, kSpecializedSemanticVariant,
kTraditionalVariant, kZVariant.
- Discarding self-variants, assuming that Z-variants are somehow symmetrical,
and possibly merge the different types of variants tags would result into
independant sets of *related* Unihan characters. Acessing the info would then
simply imply testing which set a given character belongs to, and omit the
character itself for display.
- This kind of information is most certainly user-friendly, however it lacks
structural information about the relationships between the different variants.
2. Second option: "Structured Information"
- This is probably more ambitious and challenging: ideally, the information
could be displayed graphically as a diagram of characters joined by arrowed
links, indicating the type of variant. It would support one-to-one, one-to-many
and many-to-one relationships...
Any ideas, comments, suggestions are most welcome...
-- Michel MARIANI
