ABSTRACT
PRESENTER:
Richard S. COOK
STEDT Project,
Linguistics Department
University of California, Berkeley
Email: 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:
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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