Draft of: Sunday, October 29, 2000 08:35
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Eighteenth International Unicode Conference (IUC18)
Unicode and the Web: the Global Connection
April 24-27, 2001, Hong Kong
http://www.unicode.org/iuc/iuc18/

SUBMISSION ABSTRACT

PRESENTER:
Richard S. COOK
STEDT Project, Linguistics Department
University of California, Berkeley
mailto:rscook@socrates.berkeley.edu
http://stedt.berkeley.edu/

PAPER TITLE:
The Extreme of Typographic Complexity:
Character Set Issues Relating to Computerization of 
The Eastern Han Chinese Lexicon <<Shuowenjiezi>>

STATEMENT OF PURPOSE:
This presentation is concerned with character set issues 
relating to computerization of one of the most important and 
most typographically complex Chinese texts, <<Shuowenjiezi>> 
(SW). The title of the SW lexicon has been translated as 
'Interpreting the Ancient Pictographs, Analyzing the 
Semantic-Phonetic Compounds' (Cook 1996). This Eastern Han 
Dynasty (121AD) text was the first attempt at a systematic 
componential analysis of all of the characters in the complex 
Chinese writing system. With regard to this text, this paper 
addresses the following four topics, listed here, and briefly 
described below: 

 1.) The SW text -- its history, character and importance.
 2.) The character forms -- their styles and components.
 3.) The font -- the character set and production process.
 4.) Encoding Standards -- mappings and missing characters.

PAPER DESCRIPTION:
The paper begins with a brief introduction to the SW 
text, including its basic history, general characteristics, 
and overall importance to linguists, paleographers, 
epigraphers, and classicists. In particular, the linguistic 
importance of computerization of this text is emphasized.

The character forms found in the text are then discussed, with
reference to both stylistic and componential issues. Special 
emphasis is given to the relationship between the text's 
componential analyses and the actual items of the character 
set. The issue of natural (extrapolated) extensions to the 
character set is mentioned.

Next, the 11,246 character font developed to capture this text
is introduced. This is a CIDFont with Type 1 outlines. The 
rigors of the font production process are described, including
hardware, software and indexing issues. Demonstration will be 
given of the typographic and lexicographic database systems 
employed in and resulting from the production process.

Finally and most prominently, encoding issues are addressed. 
Primary focus is given to mappings of the text-based character
set to both Big-5 and Unicode standards. In this regard, 
mapping and missing character issues are discussed with 
illustrative examples.
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