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I had to zoom in to my screen just to see the difference between those. I know that I am perhaps not well informed on this issue, but I also think that having
by rootbear 11y ago
I had to zoom in to my screen just to see the difference between those.
I know that I am perhaps not well informed on this issue, but I also think that having multiple code points for what most people would perceive as the "same" character is not a good idea.
- Grue3 11y agoIt's a matter of the font size. At the size they're usually displayed, the characters look quite different [1] [2]. The real problem is that there's no way to mark a character as Chinese or Japanese on HN. So if it actually was the same character it would've been displayed identically. A common character that looks very different in Japanese and Chinese is 直 [3] and there's only one Unicode codepoint for it. [1] https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E6%AF%8F https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E6%AF%8F [2] https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E6%AF%8E https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E6%AF%8E [3] https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E7%9B%B4 https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E7%9B%B4
- mratzloff 11y agoIt's not the same. It's written differently.
- kps 11y agoSo are single-story and double-story ‘a’ and ‘g’. But those don't have nationalist politics attached.
- SixSigma 11y agoCome to England and go to the first floor of any building. Want to jump off ?
- alextgordon 11y agoThink of them as words, not letters. It would supremely bother me if I were unable to write "colour" and always had to write "color". I'm sure a Japanese person would be perplexed as to why that extra "u" matters since it's the "same damn word".
- theoh 11y agoThe case of the Turkish "i" is a good example of the difficulties faced by Unicode in this area. See multiple previous discussions on HN.
- greggman 11y agoThey are not perceived as the same by most people in those cultures. There are tons of characters that to someone who's eyes are not used to spotting the difference would not notice they are actually different. A single dot, or touch vs pass through or curved at the tip vs not make all the difference 入 vs 人 玉 vs 王 口 vs ロ <- my font might make those indisguishable out of context 千 vs 干 vs 于 of course in English we have 0 vs O and l vs 1
- fryguy 11y agoIn English, even within the same letter there are variations on how it can look. For instance, the letter a can look different based on serif/sans-serif, double-story/single-story, or even cursive and italic. There isn't that much variation in fonts for Asian characters, is there?
- Nadya 11y agoThere are also plenty of variations in calligraphy that make some store signs nearly impossible to read (for me). There are differences but many of them come from computers not being able to properly render pictographs. Compare 人 with: http://i.imgur.com/ZpFMQoU.png http://i.imgur.com/ZpFMQoU.png for one of the most obvious differences. For Japanese there is: 篆書、隷書、楷書、行書、草書. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seal_script https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seal_script https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clerical_script https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clerical_script https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regular_script https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regular_script https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semi-cursive_script https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semi-cursive_script https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cursive_script_(East_Asia) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cursive_script_(East_Asia) Can see more here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_calligraphy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_calligraphy
- mamon 11y agoI was always curios about it: does reading Chinese requires better eyesight because glyphs are more complex?
- thaumasiotes 11y agoNo, it requires larger font sizes.
- kneonx 11y agoNope, it just requires you to know what the glyph means :o