4 ms·

> Not that hard to imagine, OCR existed back then? How do you train OCR on a character that doesn't exist though? Even these days, OCR often confuses the 52 La

> Not that hard to imagine, OCR existed back then? How do you train OCR on a character that doesn't exist though? Even these days, OCR often confuses the 52 Latin characters, so I wouldn't expect as good of results with older technology and some 20k CJK characters.

Izkata 2mo ago
(Talking about Japanese here) I don't know if this is how OCR would work here, but they're made of components called radicals. It's kind of like how letters make words, but in a two dimensional layout, and one letter was wrong and a nonexistent word was made. For example 彁 is made of parts of 引 and 歌 (the first that popped into my mind). IIRC there's only like 200-something radicals, though some can be hard to spot due to how they overlap or nest inside each other.
- cyphar 2mo ago
  I find 鸚哥（いんこ） to be the easiest way to type the right hand side of 彁.
- hippietrail 2mo ago
  Each character has one "radical" out of a set of 214, which was assigned by the Kangxi emperor about three centuries ago as a way to index and sort characters. Sometimes it's the whole character itself, sometimes it's a clear part of a character, sometimes it has to be pointed out. Some or all or none of the other components of a character may also be radicals or not. Westerns use "radical" to mean any component but I don't know whether that's common among Chinese or Japanese people as well.
eviks 2mo ago
It does exist? It's part of Unicode!
- gucci-on-fleek 2mo ago
  It's listed in the Unicode character database, but I doubt that it was in (m)any fonts 20 years ago, it would have been in zero printed books [0], and nobody knew the meaning of the character, so I'd argue that it's more an artifact of the Unicode compilation process than a "real" character. [0]: Aside from the "Overview of National Administrative Districts" book mentioned in the article
  - eviks 2mo ago
    You don't need (m)any fonts, only need one font used by the book and you can get it the same way it was originally done - gluing some parts of other characters together. Or you could just draw it if the Unicode version is too dissimilar from the book version for a reliable OCR. (though if the character came from this single book, likely the Unicode reference is its replica?)

Izkata 2mo ago

(Talking about Japanese here) I don't know if this is how OCR would work here, but they're made of components called radicals. It's kind of like how letters make words, but in a two dimensional layout, and one letter was wrong and a nonexistent word was made. For example 彁 is made of parts of 引 and 歌 (the first that popped into my mind). IIRC there's only like 200-something radicals, though some can be hard to spot due to how they overlap or nest inside each other.

cyphar 2mo ago
I find 鸚哥（いんこ） to be the easiest way to type the right hand side of 彁.
hippietrail 2mo ago
Each character has one "radical" out of a set of 214, which was assigned by the Kangxi emperor about three centuries ago as a way to index and sort characters. Sometimes it's the whole character itself, sometimes it's a clear part of a character, sometimes it has to be pointed out. Some or all or none of the other components of a character may also be radicals or not. Westerns use "radical" to mean any component but I don't know whether that's common among Chinese or Japanese people as well.

eviks 2mo ago

It does exist? It's part of Unicode!

gucci-on-fleek 2mo ago
It's listed in the Unicode character database, but I doubt that it was in (m)any fonts 20 years ago, it would have been in zero printed books [0], and nobody knew the meaning of the character, so I'd argue that it's more an artifact of the Unicode compilation process than a "real" character. [0]: Aside from the "Overview of National Administrative Districts" book mentioned in the article
- eviks 2mo ago
  You don't need (m)any fonts, only need one font used by the book and you can get it the same way it was originally done - gluing some parts of other characters together. Or you could just draw it if the Unicode version is too dissimilar from the book version for a reliable OCR. (though if the character came from this single book, likely the Unicode reference is its replica?)