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In case anyone is wondering why different glyphs have the same unicode code point, and how an app is supposed to decide which one to render... Well I don't know

In case anyone is wondering why different glyphs have the same unicode code point, and how an app is supposed to decide which one to render... Well I don't know the reason for the first question actually, though many people appear to have some choice comments. But as for the second question: for HTML documents, many tags have a lang attribute that decide which version of the glyph to render within that tag. Hacker News has lang="en", so it'll use a user setting to decide. For example, in Firefox' about:config, there's a setting called cjk_pref_fallback_order. If e.g. ja comes first, the little square inside the top square in 骨 is rendered on the right side, if any zh thing comes first, it's rendered on the left side.

geokon 4y ago
the lil inside square is inconsistent in chinese For instance traditional chinese in china will be left 過. Most computer systems will type this one But in Taiwan they do right side. That said, i dont entirely understand how it works. You cant even copy\paste the right hand version into this comment box for instance- but you can see it on wiki. Maybe theyre separate fonts? Really not sure. Maybe somebody knows better And simplified is entirely different 过
AnIdiotOnTheNet 4y ago
> In case anyone is wondering why different glyphs have the same unicode code point, and how an app is supposed to decide which one to render... Well I don't know the reason for the first question actually https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Han_unification https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Han_unification My understanding is that this is basically "white guy says all Asian writing looks the same" in standards form and is largely regarded as a terrible idea.
- kevin_thibedeau 4y ago
  Unicode had a builtin language tagging system to resolve glyph variants. Han unification was implemented with this in mind. Then the tagging got deprecated in a later version.
  - AnIdiotOnTheNet 4y ago
    The more I learn about unicode, the more it looks like Bad Ideas: The Standard to me. The only good part of it is the UTF-8 encoding and that was just Thompson and Pike sitting down and thinking about the problem for an hour.
    - kevin_thibedeau 4y ago
      UTF-8 is just a simplified improvement on another variable encoding. They didn't conjure it from nothing.

geokon 4y ago

the lil inside square is inconsistent in chinese For instance traditional chinese in china will be left 過. Most computer systems will type this one But in Taiwan they do right side. That said, i dont entirely understand how it works. You cant even copy\paste the right hand version into this comment box for instance- but you can see it on wiki. Maybe theyre separate fonts? Really not sure. Maybe somebody knows better And simplified is entirely different 过

AnIdiotOnTheNet 4y ago

> In case anyone is wondering why different glyphs have the same unicode code point, and how an app is supposed to decide which one to render... Well I don't know the reason for the first question actually https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Han_unification https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Han_unification My understanding is that this is basically "white guy says all Asian writing looks the same" in standards form and is largely regarded as a terrible idea.

kevin_thibedeau 4y ago
Unicode had a builtin language tagging system to resolve glyph variants. Han unification was implemented with this in mind. Then the tagging got deprecated in a later version.
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 4y ago
  The more I learn about unicode, the more it looks like Bad Ideas: The Standard to me. The only good part of it is the UTF-8 encoding and that was just Thompson and Pike sitting down and thinking about the problem for an hour.
  - kevin_thibedeau 4y ago
    UTF-8 is just a simplified improvement on another variable encoding. They didn't conjure it from nothing.