Re: Level of Unicode support required for various languages

On 26/10/2007, Mark E. Shoulson <[email protected]> wrote:
>m
> >> (Examples exist, like U+3ADA (?) and U+66F6 (?).)
> >
> > The two charcaters have different meaning, though i have to admit I am
> > hard pushed to find a font that maintains the differnce in the bottom
> > half of the character &#26352; U+66F0 and &#26085; U+65E5 respectively.
> Yeah, and an "x" in English has a different meaning (sound) than an "x"
> in Spanish (letters "mean" sounds; Chinese graphs mean words.  More or
> less).  Yet we still encode them the same because they look the same.
> Unicode generally tries to code what's written more than what's meant, I
> thought.

These two characters *look similar*, and in many fonts it is difficult
to distinguish them clearly, but they are actually written with
different, *non-unifiable* components.

U+3ADA 㫚
Written with Radical 72 (RI4 日 "sun") and 勿 WU4 phonetic
Also written as U+6612 昒 HU1
Pronounced HU1
Means "early morning, daylight" (hence the RI4 日 "sun" radical)

U+66F6 曶
Written with Radical 73 (YUE1 曰 "speak") and 勿 WU4 phonetic
Also written as U+5FFD 忽 HU1
Pronounced HU1
An onomatopoeic word meaning "the sound of exhalation" (hence the YUE1
曰 "speak" radical)

Unfortunately the similarity between these two characters means that
sometimes the wrong character is used. For example, in the on-line
version of the Kangxi Dictionary U+3ADA is used throughout for the
entry for U+66F6, and U+66F6 is used throughout for the entry for
U+3ADA !

<http://www.zdic.net/zd/zi/ZdicE6Zdic9BZdicB6.htm> (click on "Kangxi
Zidian" tab)
<http://www.zdic.net/zd/zi2/ZdicE3ZdicABZdic9A.htm> (click on "Kangxi
Zidian" tab)

(at least I think they've got the characters the wrong way round --
but maybe it's me and/or Unihan that is confused)

Andrew